“Pretty When You Cry” by VAST

"Pretty When You Cry" was the first single from Visual Audio Sensory Theater, the debut album VAST released on Elektra in April 1998, and the man behind it, Jon Crosby, had signed to the label at just 17. He co-produced the track with Fred Maher, the two of them share the drum credit, Maher recorded it, and Andy Wallace mixed.

The album around it was a grand, strange hybrid: samples of the Benedictine monks of the Abbey of Saint-Maur and of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares set against an 18-piece orchestra, guitars and electronics, plus the world choirs Crosby had recorded on his travels. "Pretty When You Cry" did modest business on the charts, and it took the next single, "Touched", to break the band. The song later rolled over the closing credits of the German film We Are the Night and turned up on its soundtrack.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.