Whoops! There Goes the Neighbourhood


Whoops! There Goes the Neighbourhood was The Blow Monkeys' 1989 follow-up album to She Was Only A Grocer's Daughter, released two years before.
The album, the fourth issued from the band, represented a further step towards the incorporation of more dancey elements, started with their third 1987 LP, especially with the UK hit "It Doesn't Have to Be That Way", which, getting to Number 5, made that their highest-charting song ever.
The first single was "This Is Your Life", still a pop rock/new wave track, which didn't get higher than Number 70. The next version of the song, its 1989 remix, which turned it into a properly dance tune, fared much better, reaching Number 32 in Great Britain. After the flop of the second single, the politically oriented "It Pays to Belong", written following Dr. Robert's tradition of criticising England's political reality, which didn't enter the UK Top 75, the lead singer scored a hit together with soul singer Kym Mazelle, which reached Number 7. The album tracklist was quickly rejigged, "Wait" recredited as a Blow Monkeys song and included on the album, together with the more successful, reworked version of "This is Your Life". The original version was added to the CD version, and miscredited as a "1988 remix".
The original track listing is still reflected in the order of the lyrics in the CD booklet and on the vinyl inner sleeve. As planned before the inclusion of "Wait" and the "This is Your Life" remix, the track list went:
  1. "It Pays to Belong"
  2. "No Woman is an Island"
  3. "This is Your Life"
  4. "Come on Down"
  5. "Squaresville"
  6. "Sweet Talking Rapist at Home"
  7. "Bombed Into the Stoneage"
  8. "Let's Emigrate"
  9. "The Love of Which I Dare Not Speak"
Presumably, at 50 minutes, both the vinyl and CD versions would have been identical, with the LP side break being between tracks five and six.
The released version of the album, with its 10 tracks, can be ideally divided into two parts, more or less corresponding to the two sides: the first displays more traditionally pop-rock tunes, approximately lasting 3 to 5 minutes; the second presents instead more new wave-oriented tracks, the timings of which are much longer, 6 to 8 minutes. In perfect accordance with the group's habit of describing their home country's social life, most of the lyrics deal with such topics, though there is not a particular unifying theme here, as in the previous disc, which made that a real concept album, against Thatcher's iron politics.
The final CD edition included three bonus tracks; the original version of "This Is Your Life", its B-side, "The Love of Which I Dare Not Speak" and an extended mix of the album track "Squaresville".

Track listing

Words and music: Dr. Robert
  1. "This is Your Life" – 4:37
  2. "Wait" – 3:08
  3. "No Woman is an Island" – 4:19
  4. "It Pays to Belong" – 5:35
  5. "Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love" – 3:45
  6. "Squaresville" – 4:22
  7. "Come on Down" – 5:02
  8. "Sweet Talking Rapist at Home" – 7:38
  9. "Bombed into the Stoneage" – 6:01
  10. "Let's Emigrate" – 8:28
  11. "The Love of Which I Dare Not Speak" – 3:59
  12. "This is Your Life" – 5:11
  13. "Squaresville" – 8:02

    Singles taken from the album

The booklet, as usual, highlights the various religious inclinations of Dr. Robert, who thanks either Buddha and God, inviting them to "Come on down!", and, above all, it underlines the political flavour of the work, both featuring a quotation from Wilhelm Reich, which goes like this:
and also informing fans and buyers in general, that:

Personnel