Talk Talk’s ‘Very Best Of’ Returns As New Career-Spanning Compilation
Talk Talk’s Very Best Of is to be reissued as a newly re-ordered and now career-spanning compilation. Changes to the original 1997 release puts Talk Talk’s greatest hits in chronological order and expands it with a new inclusion, the track New Grass from the band’s final album, Laughing Stock. The reissue will be available on black gatefold 2LP and CD on 14 March.
Pre-order The Very Best Of Talk Talk here.
Talk Talk were formed in 1981 by Mark Hollis, Lee Harris and Paul Webb. Starting out as a synth-pop group, their first two albums, The Party’s Over and It’s My Life reached the top 40 in the UK charts and produced global hits Talk Talk, Today, It’s My Life and Such a Shame. In 1986, the band released The Colour of Spring which was followed by 1988’s Spirit of Eden, the album that shifted their sound towards experimental post-rock. In 1991, Talk Talk released their final album Laughing Stock, again to great critical acclaim.
The band’s long-lasting legacy has manifested in many ways. Credited with inventing post-rock, cited as influences to an array of artists such as Kate Bush, Tears for Fears and Radiohead with others covering a host of Talk Talk repertoire, not least No Doubt’s widely-praised hit cover of It’s My Life.
“My idea is that a band should be able to develop constructively, like Bowie,” Mark Hollis once told Sounds, while in an NME feature he stated that he wanted to “write stuff that you’ll be able to listen to in ten years’ time”. Talk Talk’s Very Best Of shows that people will be listening to their music for many years yet to come.
Talk Talk: Very Best Of (CD tracklist):
Talk Talk
Today (Single Version)
Have You Heard The News?
It’s My Life
Such A Shame (Original Version)
Dum Dum Girl
Life’s What You Make It
Living In Another World
Give It Up
April 5th
Time It’s Time
I Believe In You (Single Version)
Eden (Edit)
Wealth
New Grass