In late 1999
Kevin Rowland, vocalist and mastermind behind
Dexys Midnight Runners released an album called
My Beauty. It had been a bewilderingly long time since his last LP – eleven years. Everything about
My Beauty, however, was equally bewildering.
Rowland's concept seemed simple – a record of twelve cover songs that touched him during his struggle with and fight back from addiction. From his sleeve notes: "After being so lost and seeing only ugliness in the world, these songs started to penetrate my frightened world... I realised I needed to record them before I could do anything else." Rowland, however, took the unlikely step of rewriting many of the songs’ lyrics to reflect his recent travails. Opener
“The Greatest Love Of All” - like the rest of the record, drenched in lush, soft-rock strings mostly arranged by
Fiachra Trench - began with a multitracked conversation between the voices in Rowland’s head, and proclaimed “Everybody’s searching for a hero/people need someone they can look up to/there was nobody around who fulfilled my needs/a lonely place to be/and I tried to depend on me.” The final verse of “The Long And Winding Road” now stated “I know that I’m going home/I’m coming through the door/because I feel I deserve more.” The most complete rewriting was reserved for Squeeze’s “Labelled With Love,” now subtitled
“I’ll Stay With My Dreams” and transformed into a harrowing cocaine story: “Sniffs to remember I, me and myself/chops up the coke and drops more beads of sweat/home is a place I don’t know where that is/so the pain has been bottled/I’ll stay with my dreams.” The album was originally slated to include a version of Bruce Springsteen’s
“Thunder Road” and the
track appeared on the initial promo copies of the disc, but at the last minute Springsteen himself reportedly refused permission due to Rowland’s
lyric changes.
The album’s
cover featured Rowland standing in front of a pink chair and dressing screen draped with a pink feather boa. Shirtless and holding up a black frock just enough to expose his underwear and the tops of thigh-high stockings, he wore makeup and a single strand of pearls around his neck.
My Beauty was released by
Creation Records in the UK, and was accompanied by a video for Rowland’s version of
Unit 4+2’s
“Concrete And Clay,” filmed in the style of the album’s graphics. A short in-costume performance at the 1999 Reading Festival was met with boos and the throwing of garbage at the stage.
Reviews ranged from
savage to
confused, and while the album has found a few cautious
fans in the years since its release, Rowland is still mainly alone when he
remembers the experience as “beautiful, in a way,” though he has described himself as
“nuts” at the time.
The record sold poorly – initial estimates were around 500 copies worldwide, but Creation head Alan McGee, whom Rowland
blamed at the time for the album’s performance,
places the number closer to 20,000. It was never released in the United States, and is no longer in print.
In the liner notes, after a long list of acknowledgements, Rowland offered a final dedication: “I dedicate this record to K. We’re fucking home now boy.”
posted by Blake at 8:51 AM on December 23, 2010 [2 favorites]