"Loving You, Hating Me" Released: 1982 (US/Canada)
"Numbers" Released: February 1983
"Heat" Released: 1983 (US)
The Art of Falling Apart is the second full-length album by the English synth-pop duo Soft Cell, released in 1983.
The album reached No. 5 on the UK charts, although its two singles "Where the Heart Is" and the double A-sided single "Numbers" / "Barriers" both failed to reach the Top 20, breaking the duo's run of five consecutive Top 5 singles in the UK, reaching No. 21 and No. 25, respectively. The album opener "Forever the Same" was initially planned as the 3rd UK single release, but withdrawn, with the original extended version of the track being included on 2018's career retrospective box set Keychains and Snowstorms: The Soft Cell Story.[1]
Initial copies of the album included a bonus 12-inch EP containing the tracks "Martin" and "Hendrix Medley".
In a joint review of The Art of Falling Apart and Berlin's Pleasure Victim, Michael Goldberg of Record remarked that while the opening tracks "Forever the Same" and "Where the Heart Is" are decent, Marc Almond's monotonal vocal style quickly wears thin, and David Ball's use of the same synthesizer stylistics on every track similarly "[makes] the whole album sound like variations on one theme." He particularly derided the synth-pop renditions of Jimi Hendrix songs, saying "Just that concept ought to elicit a chuckle. Suffice to say that Soft Cell are not able to do for the Hendrix songs what they did for Gloria Jones' 'Tainted Love'."[6]
The album was ranked at number 4 among the "Albums of the Year" for 1983 by NME.[7]
^LGBT Song of the Day – Soft Cell – Numbers
16 April 2017 edit/ incomplete note; Looking for why or when it may have been banned. Found nine published versions/ editions since original publication and right way through to recent years at www.goodreads.com/work/editions/105732-numbers but no actual dates or territories where it was banned.
