“Always the Sun” by The Stranglers

"Always the Sun" came out on Epic on 6 October 1986, the second single from Dreamtime, the Stranglers' ninth studio album, and it's the band at their most wistful: a lilting, sun-dappled new wave tune with a shrug of resignation in it. Hugh Cornwell, Jean-Jacques Burnel, Dave Greenfield and Jet Black share the writing credit, Cornwell wrote the words, and Mike Kemp produced alongside the band.

Epic pushed it hard in four formats, picture disc included, and it still stalled at 30 in the UK, to Cornwell's disbelief; he had it pegged as a hit on the scale of "Golden Brown". Europe was kinder, with 15 in France and 16 in Ireland, it reached 21 in Australia, and radio play nearly cracked America open for them. A remix came out on 24 December 1990 and gave them a second top 30 hit with it at home.

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