“Cracking Up” by Nick Lowe

"Cracking Up" is pure Nick Lowe, written, sung and produced by the man himself for Labour of Lust, the 1979 album that came out on Radar in Britain and Columbia in America, and in the UK it went out as a single with "Basing Street" on the B-side. The band is Rockpile to a man: Lowe on bass, Dave Edmunds and Billy Bremner on guitars, Terry Williams on drums, the same gang who were cutting Edmunds' Repeat When Necessary at the very same time.

Labour of Lust led off with "Cruel to Be Kind", the only big American hit Lowe ever landed, and "Basing Street" finally found a home next to "Cracking Up" when Yep Roc reissued the album on CD in 2011, gathering every track from the US and UK editions.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.