Album · Big Country
Steeltown by Big Country
Steeltown is an album by Big Country, released in 1984. 2 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 2 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “Just a Shadow”, on 1 list with a best position of #1736.
Steeltown, Big Country's second album, hit the shops on Mercury on 19 October 1984, and it's the sound of the Dunfermline band following The Crossing by digging in rather than lightening up. Steve Lillywhite produced it at ABBA's Polar Studios in Stockholm, yet there's not a trace of Swedish pop gloss on it: Stuart Adamson and Bruce Watson's guitars still skirl like pipes in a gale, while Tony Butler's bass and Mark Brzezicki's drums drive on like a band on the march.
The title track is the heart of it, a song about Corby, the town where Scots poured in for jobs at the Stewarts & Lloyds plant after it started up in 1935, in the depths of the Depression, only to be left jobless when it shut in May 1980. It's anger and pride in equal measure, and it became the band's only UK number-one album, if only for a week. "East of Eden" climbed to number 17 on the singles chart.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from Steeltown on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Just a Shadow | 1 | #1736 | – | 2003 | |
| 2 | Where the Rose is Sown | 1 | #98 | – | 1984 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.