Song written by Brett Lewis Anderson and Richard John Oakes
Suede version
The song was recorded by the British band Suede for their third album ‘Coming Up’ and released as the second single from the album. It reached number 8 in the UK singles chart and also got into the singles charts in Scandinavia.
Kim Wilde version
Kim Wilde recorded a cover of ‘Beautiful Ones’ for her 2011 album Snapshots.
Versions
There are two versions of ‘Beautiful Ones’: the album version and the rough demo mix from the promotional cd of ‘Snapshots’.
Kim about ‘Beautiful ones’
At the beginning of the Nineties I was still recording and making albums, but my career had started to be a bit quieter, so more time for me to sit back a little bit and see what everybody else was doing. It was a really interesting time for British pop music, the Britpop thing was exploding with bands like Suede and Blur and Oasis and that was kindof cool, they made some really great songs, there were songs amongst all the posing and the posturing and attitude, which I loved. Suede of course were full of attitude but they wrote some really good pop songs. I love the way that they – It was called Britpop, unashamedly pop music, whereas in the old days they called themselves punk rockers, pop was a dirty word. But the Britpop gang they embraced their pop heritage. So I thought I’d nick it back off them and as a pop person myself and underline its pop credentials. I think ‘Beautiful Ones’ is a great pop record. (1)
Credits
Bass guitar: Ricky Wilde
Guitars: Neil Jones & Ricky Wilde
Keyboards: Andrew Murray
Additional vocals by Ricky Wilde & Scarlett Wilde
Produced by Ricky Wilde & Andrew Murray
Vocal production by Ricky Wilde
Additional engineering by Pascal Magdinier
Interview source
(1) Track by track commentary, Sony Music, 2011.
Lyrics
High on diesel and gasoline, psycho for drum machine
shaking their bits to the hits,
Drag acts, drug acts, suicides, in your dad’s suits you hide
staining his name again,
Cracked up, stacked up, 22, psycho for sex and glue
lost it to Bostik, yeah,
Shaved heads, rave heads, on the pill, got too much time to kill
get into bands and gangs,
Oh, here they come, the beautiful ones, the beautiful ones
Loved up, doved up, hung around, stoned in a lonely town
shaking their meat to the beat,
High on diesel and gasoline, psycho for drum machine
shaking their bits to the hits,
Oh, here they come, the beautiful ones, the beautiful ones.
You don’t think about it,
You don’t do without it,
because you’re beautiful,
And if your baby’s going crazy
that’s how you made me,
La, la, la, la…