#17: My Beloved Girl : Edwyn Collins (Elevation Records, ACID 6/WEA 248 138-7, 1987)
The second and what proved to be the final single for Elevation Records was released in the last week of October 1987.
Although not similar in sound, it was a single on which the team involved in What Presence?! were reunited as Phil Thornalley was brought in as producer. There’s also other musicians credited, including Dave Ruffy (ex Aztec Camera) on drums, Tim Holmes on sax and Dave Clayton (who much later in 2003 would join Simply Red) on synth.
mp3: Edwyn Collins – My Beloved Girl
My Beloved Girl is an out-and-out pop song, very much of its time and place, as evidenced by the use of backing singers George Chandler, Jimmy Chambers and Lee Vanderbilt. It’s all a bit ‘meh’ in the wider context of what had come before and what would come in later years, but given that WEA were, by now, desperate for Elevation Record to deliver some sort of big hit single, it’s no real surprise this was the road which everyone chose to go down.
The b-side is another which has a real 80s feel in terms of production, but with it never being remotely considered as a possible single, there’s a little more of Edwyn’s vocal being straightforward, and he gets to play his guitar solo in the style to what we had become accustomed.
mp3: Edwyn Collins – Clouds (Fogging Up My Mind)
As usual, there was a 12″ release as well as a 7″. The larger disc offered the same version of My Beloved Girl along with extended versions of both sides of the 7″:-
mp3: Edwyn Collins – My (Long Time) Beloved Girl
mp3: Edwyn Collins – Clouds (Fogging Up My Mind) – Cumulonimbus Version
Years ago, I had to look up ‘Cumulonimbus’ as I had no idea how it fitted into this single – turns out they are the types of clouds that can lead to thunderstorms and tornadoes. Every day is a school day……
The extended version of My Beloved Girl is a bit of a chore while the extended version of Clouds, which stretches to over seven minutes in length, feels as if Edwyn and Phil just wanted to experiment a bit in the studio, and given WEA were bankrolling it, why not?
There was a bit of a marketing push on this one, and a week or so after the initial release, a box version was issued. This contained a 7″ EP, with the two sides of the single alongside two previously unreleased songs, and three postcards, all of which had a photo of Edwyn on one side while the other sides had the lyrics or the forthcoming dates for a UK tour in November/December 1987 dates or was left blank.
mp3: Edwyn Collins – 50 Shades of Blue (acoustic version)
mp3: Edwyn Collins – What’s The Big Idea?
The former is a guitar/harmonica/bass guitar rendition of a tune that would later get a full band treatment and be released as a single in 1989, and also included on the album Hope and Despair (watch this space). The latter would be re-recorded a few years later and included on the 1990 album, Hellbent on Compromise…..you can see that Edwyn has long had an interesting way of naming his albums to reflect his differing states of mind.
My Beloved Girl did a bit better than Don’t Shilly Shally, in that it charted (as such) for three weeks at #87, #84 and #99.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 