Recently i was asked to create a cake to mark the 20th Anniversary of Suede’s 3rd album ‘Coming Up’, which was the bands third album released in the well publicised Britpop era. Having been a fan of this particular era of music myself, i was always more attracted to Oasis with being a northerner and only knew of Suede’s bigger hits and not paying as much attention to the albums themselves. However last year i created a cake to mark the anniversary of their second album ‘Dog Man Star’ which meant i gave them more of my attention 20 years after the original conception! When i was asked to create the cake to mark this latest anniversary, it definitely got me more interested in finding out a bit more about the album in question by listening and reading up on the recording process and ideas behind it.
The album itself was the first to be made after the departure of legendary guitarist Bernard Butler, who went on to form the duo McAlmont and Butler as well as appearing on tracks by and producing artists such as The Libertines, Edwin Collins, Bert Jansch and even Roy Orbison – safe to say they were pretty big shoes to fill! But fill them they did, with none other than 17 year old guitarist Richard Oakes, who was hired off the back of a demo tape sent into the Suede fan club, which is the stuff that all us young budding guitarists can only dream of! Just goes to show, send your stuff around and get it heard, you never know what might come of it! The band prepared for the recording of the new album by listening to a lot of 60’s pop classics, as well as T-Rex in order to come up with a much more pop-hit based album than the last one, allowing them to gain much more success commercially in the UK, hitting number 1 on the UK album chart along with 5 top ten singles. It also was a big hit in Europe and Asia, all together selling 1.5 million copies world wide! In fact, the album was praised pretty much throughout the music world, apart from one such music critic who’s review has been slightly edited on the official Wikipedia page..”Andy Gill of The Independent total twat, however was a harsh critic of the album. In contrast to their first album, he wrote: “two albums and one guitarist later, they sound utterly mined out,” – Can you spot the slight addition? I bloody love Wikipedia sometimes.
All in all, the album continues to be a firm favourite with Suede fans as well as listeners of music from that era in general, which made it an absolute pleasure to create a cake to mark the occasion. Here’s to another 20 years of success and shows…i really should try and attend one one day.
– Adam
