“Such a Shame” by Talk Talk

"Such a Shame" is Mark Hollis's song, words and music, written for It's My Life, Talk Talk's second album, and it followed on 26 March 1984 as the record's second single, with Tim Friese-Greene producing. Hollis took his cue from Luke Rhinehart's The Dice Man, one of his favourite books, though he made it plain that he admired the novel more than the way of living it describes.

The NME's Richard Cook tore into it. Continental Europe felt otherwise: across 1984 and 1985 it went top 10 in several countries and all the way to number one in Switzerland. James Marsh designed the sleeve, and some copies came with a bonus seven-inch, The Talk Talk Demos, holding three songs the band cut in June 1981: "Candy", "Talk Talk" and "Mirror Man".

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.