Song · Babybird
“You're Gorgeous” by Babybird
From the album Ugly Beautiful (1996)
“You're Gorgeous” by Babybird appears on 6 radio countdowns from 3 stations between 1996 and 2025. It was first released in 1996 on the album Ugly Beautiful. Its best result is #8 on the Virgin Radio Top 10 Songs of 1996. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #113 alternative song of 1996 and #4,670 alternative song of all time.
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"You're Gorgeous" landed on 30 September 1996 on the Echo label and went all the way to number three in Britain, the only time Babybird ever cracked the UK top 10. Stephen Jones wrote it for Ugly Beautiful and co-produced it with Steve Power, and it travelled well, reaching the top 40 everywhere from Iceland and Italy to Israel and New Zealand.
Most people heard a sweet, swooning love song. It's nothing of the sort: the voice doing all the complimenting belongs to a female model talking to her photographer, and the whole thing is a sly portrait of a man who uses the people he shoots. That gap between the sugary tune and the creepy story is the joke and the sting. Melody Maker put it at number 11 among its singles of 1996.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | 8 | Virgin Radio United Kingdom | Virgin Radio Top 10 Songs of 1996 | 10 |
| 1996 | 10 | Triple J Australia (national) | Triple J Hottest 100 of 1996 | 100 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 279 | Virgin Radio | Virgin Radio Top 500 Songs of All-Time (December 2001) | 500 |
| 2003 | 90 | Virgin Radio | Virgin Radio VR10x10 (April 2003) | 100 |
| 2004 | 361 | Virgin Radio | Virgin Radio Top 500 Songs of All-Time (December 2004) | 500 |
| 2025 | 85 | Absolute Radio | Absolute Radio 100 Ultimate Britpop Anthems | 100 |
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