DESCRIPTION:
Hats is the second album from Glaswegian adult alternative/pop group The Blue Nile, released on 16 October 1989 on Linn Records in the UK and on A&M Records in the US.
Lush and evocative, this album is considered by many music critics as the band's most enduring work, and one of the best pop albums released in the 1980s. After a prolonged delay in which an entire album's worth of work was scrapped, The Blue Nile released Hats to rave reviews, including a rare five-star rating from Q magazine. In 2000, the same magazine placed it at number 92 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. In 2006, Q Magazine placed the album at #38 in its list of "40 Best Albums of the '80s".[2]
Hats is also The Blue Nile's most successful album, reaching #12 on the UK album charts, and spawning three singles: "The Downtown Lights," "Headlights on the Parade," and "Saturday Night". Rickie Lee Jones, a huge fan of the band, personally selected The Blue Nile as her opening act for her US tour in 1990. She would later record a duet with them, a cover of their own "Easter Parade," which was featured as a B-side to the single "Headlights on the Parade".
Since The Blue Nile was essentially unknown in the United States in 1989, the cover artwork for the US release of Hats was slightly modified for marketing reasons, with the band's name in larger letters.
As a promotional tool, A&M Records--who distributed Hats in North America--took out a full-page advertisement in Billboard offering a free copy of the CD to anyone who called a toll-free number which was provided.
Annie Lennox, with whom The Blue Nile worked on Diva, later performed a cover of "The Downtown Lights" on her second solo recording, Medusa.