#2 Prefab Sprout - Steve McQueen

Lifting the fog of unrequited love.

To say Steve McQueen by Prefab Sprout is my favourite album is not absolute. I can never make my mind up around those things. But at the moment it is. Maybe it’s because I’m writing this at the end of Autumn and the brown leaves are just barely clinging on to the branches. But nevertheless, the album has a certain sad charm about it.

I initially got drawn to the album by way of the cover and title. Being hardcore into motorcycles, those two things immediately drew me, but what was revealed by listening to the album, was a certain emotional depth I hadn't heard before. Especially not delivered in this kind of way and definitely not at the age of 16, when I first heard it.

You know, thinking of that girl, that you just couldn’t really muster up the courage to just kiss. Or saying goodbye to that friendship that just didn’t flow anymore.

Every autumn, I just intuitively tune in and are reminded that feelings aren’t something you should try and control. They are there to be experienced and listened to. They might push you around – even suffocate you – but they will never be final. Not even feel the same. And the album has this so intimately threaded into both the rhythm and lyrics. It dares to look at both sides of heartbreak, to be the person, but also the friend.

This album will forever hold the songs that dared me to reflect and see feelings as what they are. Like the seasons, like the wind, like the sea and the autumn fog.

'Oh my, oh my, have you seen the weather?'