This review’s been a long time coming

Review of The Blue Nile’s Hats

The Blue Nile — Hats

Released October 16, 1989

When I was making my initial list of albums for this series, I had to include this one even if it has been out 35 years already. And with so many artists that I love citing it as an influence, I almost feel a bit embarrassed that I’m only just now getting to it. But hey, everything happens in its own time so now I’m finally listening to one of my personally most anticipated albums, Hats by a Glasgow-based group The Blue Nile.

I was also looking forward to checking out this band in particular because they’re Scottish and was formed by students at the University of Glasgow, one of the members Paul Buchanan was born in Edinburgh, and one of Buchanan’s solo songsfeatures in one of my all-time favorite movies, About Time. The band’s recently had a sudden exposure spike thanks to being name checked by Taylor Swift on a song from The Tortured Poets’ Department called “Guilty as Sin?.” The song specifically references a song from Hats called “Downtown Lights” which has been known to have inspired a song from the 1975 called “Love It If We Made It” from their third album, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships. If you lean into the interpretation that much of TTPD and particularly “Guilty as Sin?” is about Swift’s relationship with the 1975 frontman Matty Healy, then the reference to The Blue Nile in that song served as a smoking gun piece of evidence confirming their relationship and the Healy narrative of the album.

In yet another example of what has been coined the “Swift Effect,” where anything even remotely associated with Swift leads to increased economic growth and public attention, after they were named in the song, vinyl copies of the band’s album sold out in ten days after Swift’s album was released. Typically, I’d be the first to admit when I’m bandwagoning, not that there’s anything wrong with being a bandwagoner, but I think we should all be aware when we’re being one. But in this particular case, I am not bandwagoning on this album because of the Swift Effect, but more so because of the Healy Effect.

I’ve known about The Blue Nile and this album for many years because I am a long-time fan of the 1975 and have been steeped in their lore for over ten years, even recently having caught up on my 75 lore for a grad school project. I was writing 5,000 words about the band’s latest tour and stage show when I was tasked by my supervisor with listening to their influences, which led to me laying on my floor with headphones on, Hats playing, and a notepad nearby. That said, it was difficult for me to listen to this album without seeing it through a 1975 lens.

But Swift and Healy aren’t the only familiar names who have called this album, and this band, one of the greatest of all time. Annie Lennox has covered a few of their songs, including “Downtown Lights,” (which is amazing,) and which has also received cover treatment from Rod Stewart. The band has both influenced and collaborated with Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel, influenced The XX, Mk.gee, and was featured on Harry Styles’ quarantine playlist. In 2018, Hats was voted Scotland’s favorite album (with their first album listed at number 3). And in a rare find, contemporary and retrospective reviews all unanimously call this album “a triumph of personal vision over the cold, remote calculations of technology”and “if Hats has a flaw, it’s only that it’s too perfect, too considered.”

The story goes that after the release of their first album, the band was thrown into a studio and expected to make a second record immediately. But having just released an album and not having lived any life to write about in the in-between, what work they did make under pressure was eventually scrapped and after three years, they were forced to vacate the studio to allow for another band to use the space. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the time back in Glasgow gave the band enough space to actually be able to come up with some ideas they were excited about. When they got back in the studio in 1988, the album came together in a week. Seeing how well the album turned out, this just goes to show yet again what we already know, which is that label executives and suits fundamentally misunderstand the creative process. I know their perspective is one of a money-making standpoint, but in the long-run they ended up wasting money by forcing their artists into a studio when they weren’t ready. Where businesses run on quarterly timelines, musicians don’t and often need time and space to live a life worth writing about.

My favorites on this album are “Over the Hillside,” “Headlights on the Parade,” “Seven A.M.,” and “Saturday Night.”

To me, this album sounds like what I imagine Nighthawks to sound like, sharing themes of loneliness and melancholy. And I love that the singing isn’t perfect, it sounds more intimate, like a whisper.

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, 1942

Everyone talks about “Downtown Lights” as the song from this album and I can see why. It’s such a gorgeously ’80s UK slow jam. I don’t hear how “Love It If We Made It” comes from this song, at least its inspiration isn’t as obvious as LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” inspiration was on “The 1975” from Being Funny in a Foreign Language. If anything, I hear more “Robbers” from the band’s first album in the beginning of “Downtown Lights” but the kicker is they weren’t even aware of The Blue Nile during the making of that first album. Healy tells the story that after their debut was released, Jessie Ware approached him saying “You love The Blue Nile, don’t you?” but he had never heard of them. From there he became obsessed and began using them as a more direct inspiration, but Buchanan’s songwriting, its stream-of-consciousness questioning is more where I see the similarities and I’m able to understand more of where Healy’s songwriting comes from.

At only 7 songs and most of them being over 5 minutes long, it speaks to the world building nature of the overall project. They’re not so much telling a story than they are capturing a feeling through tiny details and ambiance, none of which would have worked nearly as well in shorter songs. Like a Reddit user wrote, “you need to wait till it is dark, everything is quiet, no one is around, and you can absorb it completely. It isn’t something you can listen to in the background, you need to listen to this actively and engage with it, because it demands everything you have..” It may not have fully sunk its teeth into me…yet, but I’m looking forward to revisiting it again over the years and seeing how differently I hear it each time.