The Beloved – Happiness

The perfect accompaniment for just chilling at the end of the night or beside the beach, but also a number of the tracks are equally dancefloor friendly - The Sun Rising being one of those unlikely cross over tracks that somehow found itself on DJ setlists alongside underground acid house classics. The title perfectly sums this album up - Happiness and happy vibes throughout.

Two disc reissue coming in July 2020 with some demos and B sides as the extra tracks.

Here is a link to the 5 track EU 'Happiness' sampler..... The Beloved - Happiness

Though I understand the pop appreciation of this album, really it's nearly all about deep house and seriously so. The significance of this album to the dancefloor in the UK and Balearic Islands can't be overemphasized. Still, Happiness is not the remixes and there were so many of those from these album tracks, I know it can seem like dance influenced pop music. Sorry to say it, you just had be to be there - in the clubs, in the fields, in the warehouses to know how central these chart friendly, Balearic tracks were in the underground dance worlds. I guess volume and context also had a lot to do with it! A perfect understanding of the times in dance music.

While "Found" has that perfect hippy vibe which was also so important to the 2nd summer(s) of love. And maybe it could have been the kind of thing Danny Rampling or whoever would just slip in, like the odd Minnie Ripperton (before The Orb), Jimi Hendrix, you name it, maybe The Eagles or Captain Beefheart.
Hello was kind of a joke to do with certain feelings one would get at times because of certain contexts. I hated it after a while, but it was also meant to be hated and laughed at from the start, as well as appreciated. There are one or two instrumental mixes of Hello somewhere which are still worthy to me, but it's the one track you have to put up with on Happiness. Still some love it.

Time After Time I thought was beautiful, but it's a shame of time, place and people rather than the song itself that it now sounds dated. But Jon and Steve did describe it as their partial attempt at throwaway pop as The Pet Shop Boys. Still, the arrangement has great elements for a mix as does Hello.

I guess every decade has their top 5 or so albums. This classic has to be one in the 90s, the material so good and distinguished, and with such an effect that I'd suggest its successor, its remixes album "Blissed Out" one of the top 20 albums of the 1990s, released a year later.

Some feat.

As with others, The Beloved did not hold my interest after this period, except for some, odd tracks and remixes. Sweet Harmony was a real let down to me, after thinking they were getting better with the follow up single after Happiness , "It's Alright Now".

5 stars for Happiness of course, after all these years.

My God, it is getting to 30 years later!!!
And did anything ever happen again after those ensuing years in which house as we knew it kind of died - 90 to 93-ish?
I don't think so.
It must make this album so much more important still.

Though brimming with the prerequisite electronic piano chords, and the various Roland gadgets (the TR-808 and TR-909 Rhythm Composers, the TB-303 Bass Line) that lent house its unmistakable sound, The Beloved hadn't completely abandoned their indie rock roots on "Happiness". Its closing track, "Found", wouldn't have been entirely out of place on albums by contemporaries like Happy Mondays, Primal Scream, The Stone Roses, or even Flowered Up, successfully combining rock with dance culture, while "Don't You Worry" and the particularly buoyant "I Love You More" could quite easily fit in the New Order or Pet Shop Boys catalogues… (More: http://writatlarge.blogspot.com/2010/05/hear-again-happiness.html )

One of my all time favourite dance music albums. This was a groundbreaking record in that it pre-dated Screamadelica (which many claim to be the first dance/rock record to merge both genres successfully). A truly balearic album that contains indie crossover tracks such as 'Hello' & 'Scarlet Beautiful'; gorgeous all time classic chill out in the form of The Sun Rising which is pure deep house bliss; euphoric dance music with 'Only Your Love Takes Me Higher'; & uptempo electronic grooves in the form of 'Up, Up And Away'. Their later material never matched these heights again.