“Party Fears Two” by The Associates

"Party Fears Two" is a swooning slice of art pop from Sulk, the Associates' second album, in 1982, and Billy Mackenzie and Alan Rankine had been sitting on it since 1979. They built it around a piano riff, then both turned it down: at the fag end of punk, Rankine reckoned it was too tuneful and too pretty to be hip.

The title came from Mackenzie's younger brother, who watched two girls at a party smashing windows and trying to boot the door in with their stilettos, admired them and dubbed them the Party Fears Two; Billy, as he told Smash Hits, pinched the name. The words open and close on a brother but, like most Mackenzie lyrics, they conjure a mood rather than spell anything out. It went out on seven- and 12-inch, backed with "It's Better This Way", the track before it on Sulk.

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