Happy 25th Anniversary to Texas’ fourth studio album White on Blonde, originally released February 3, 1997.
Prior to securing a contract with Mercury Records in 1988, Texas had been grinding, refining their tunesmithing and playing abilities. This unflappable work ethic was transferred over into the workshops for Southside. Released on March 13, 1989—and off the back of its white-hot launch single “I Don’t Want a Lover”—the Scottish band’s first album shifted over two million copies worldwide; the subsequent tour that followed saw them make an instant reputation as concert stage professionals.
Amid the welcome furor Southside kicked up, Texas was already brainstorming its successor: Mothers Heaven (1991). Continuing in the blues, rock and soul vein from that debut effort, the band engineered an engaging second act. For reasons still not fully understood, Mothers Heaven did not connect with consumers or critics.
Ricks Road (1993), another accomplished raft of tunes set into this vibe, met a similar fate. And while demand for Texas as a live act hadn’t waned, their records weren’t finding a wider audience outside of their core base. Shaken, but not defeated, the group—Sharleen Spiteri (vocals/guitar), Johnny McElhone (bass), Ally McErlaine (guitar), Eddie Campbell (keyboards), Richard Hynd (drums)—reassessed their artistic direction.
The writing-recording process for White on Blonde—as the long player was to be titled—stretched on for three years with its earliest drafts occurring sometime in 1994. Despite the prolonged nature of these sessions, it was an incredibly fruitful time for the quintet; Texas generated upward of 22 songs for the White on Blonde project. Fourteen cuts comprised the standard international pressing, sixteen were included on the Japanese iteration, and no less than six non-LP B-sides appeared across three, of an eventual five, singles issued from the collection during its commercial lifespan.
Barring a beautifully stripped-down rendition of the 1968 Nickolas Ashford-Valerie Simpson penned bijou “You’re All I Need to Get By,” flipside to “Put Your Arms Around Me,” nearly all that stock was penned by McElhone and Spiteri. In an even bolder maneuver, Texas handled a considerable share of the production tasks for White on Blonde—a change from their three previously trackmaster-led affairs. However, they weren’t opposed to collaboration; select co-scripting and co-boarding support came from the likes of Mike Hedges, Robert Hodgens, Dave Stewart (of Eurythmics renown), Mark Rae, Steve Christian, Ben Wolff and Andy Dean.
While Texas’ material was always evocative, it was never transportive—until White on Blonde.
Instead of clinging to the well-worn roots rock they initially favored, the five-piece pivoted toward a mesmeric blend of French pop, throwback R&B and alternative sonics. The album’s mercurial opener, spiked with a sample of Cole Porter’s 1953 standard “I Love Paris,” was aptly denominated “0.34” for its brief runtime—it set the tone for what was to follow: a rich, melodic aural feast.
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These sounds are enacted with flair and precision, evidence of the rapport Texas has as a unit both within the confines of a recording studio and on a concert stage. From the savory guitar-pop of “Postcard,” to the plush Holland-Dozier-Holland homage of “Black-Eyed Boy,” on over to the one-two power ballad punch of “Halo” and “Put Your Arms Around Me,” Campbell, Hynd, McElhone and McErlaine are stellar musicians in fine form on these cuts and the entirety of the LP.
Matched to these stunning productions are their absorbing song scripts. Putting to one side the handsome tribute to troubadour extraordinaire Bob Dylan on “Drawing Crazy Patterns,” the bulk of White on Blonde examines the high and lows of modern love as best heard on its lead single “Say What You Want.” Of course, it is Spiteri that makes this selection shine in her singular fashion.
On Southside, Mothers Heaven and Ricks Road, Spiteri’s powerhouse technique possessed an underlying sensitivity, an inimitable approach that established her as one of the finest singers of her era. With White on Blonde, she reveals a freshly minted nuance as a vocalist. Whether seething on the low-lit melancholia of “Insane” or providing a sensuous atmosphere to the already ambient pop-soul stunner “Good Advice,” Spiteri’s knack for detail regarding what she sings and how she sings it makes for an exciting listening experience. The latter track lifts its haunting strings— which are complementary to her expressive instrument—from John Cameron’s 1973 piece “Half Forgotten Daydreams.”
Unquestionably, the Texas frontwoman is her own, but one cannot help but detect reverent traces of Diana Ross, Dusty Springfield, and Chrissie Hynde (of the Pretenders) in her performances throughout White on Blonde. Her influences truly rear their head on the Japanese exclusive “Sunday Is the Saddest Day” and “Asking for Favours,” the second mentioned track is one of two B-sides to “Halo.” “Asking for Favours” joins the equally excellent White on Blonde single flipsides “Coming Down,” “Cold Day Dream,” “Tear It Up,” and “Never Never”—it’s hoped that these can be corralled into a reissue repack in the near future.
The Mercury label sent “Say What You Want” into record shops on January 6, 1997, four weeks before White on Blonde impacted in early February; the understated midtempo made a major splash, returning Texas to the confines of the British Top 10. Subsequent singles to emerge that same calendar year—“Halo,” “Black Eyed Boy,” and “Put Your Arms Around Me”—replicated this feat and brought the band three more U.K. Top 10 hits.
White on Blonde wasn’t just a singles vehicle though. Their fourth album locked in the strongest notices and numbers of their career—it not only became their inaugural number-one record in the United Kingdom, hitting the platinum mark six times there, it gathered a host of gold and platinum awards across continental Europe. Curiously, in spite of being favorites on stateside alternative and college airplay outlets for years, an American victory remained largely out of reach for Texas.
There was also the additional development as it concerned a marked shift in Spiteri’s persona as the band’s face. Via the Juergen Teller photography utilized for White on Blonde, the accompanying video clips for its singles and the countless magazine covers she graced, Spiteri took only the slightest extroverted step forward to capture the hearts of record buyers and pundits.
Texas’ hold on the zeitgeist tightened with a fifth and final single (in double a-side style) serviced in March of 1998: “Insane,” but backed with an enterprising rework of “Say What You Want” featuring RZA and Method Man of the Wu-Tang Clan. A fast friendship sprang out of a happenstance meeting between the Scottish rockers and the New York City based hip-hop clique in this period: a team-up soon ensued. Like the original version, which pinched minor samples from Marvin Gaye (1982’s “Sexual Healing”) and Martika (1991’s “Love…Thy Will Be Done”) respectively, this secondary variant was assembled around an interpolation of Engelbert Humperdinck’s 1971 chestnut “Santa Lija (Sogno d’amore).”
Retitled “Say What You Want (All Day, Every Day),” the remix was a hip-hop soul sensation and put Texas back into the upper reaches of the U.K. Top 10. A memorable performance of this remix with the group and Method Man at the BRITs in 1998 solidified Texas’ ever ascending profile.
Not content to repeat the pattern of the White on Blonde for the sake, Texas chased their muse wherever it might take them in the years after its unveiling. They must have been surprised when said muse led them back to that chartbuster for Hi (2021), the outfit’s tenth studio affair.
Spiteri recalled those circumstances during our chat for Albumism last year, “What happened was that we came across stuff from the White on Blonde sessions that we hadn’t finished! It’s funny because even though we wrote the songs twenty-five years ago, you know them straight away, the words and everything about it—because you worked on them for quite awhile! For some reason we thought, ‘We know how to finish these songs right now. We know how to complete them.’ There were only a few as we started completing them, then we started writing brand new songs and we decided to just do a completely new album. And that is how it came about.”
An unwavering commitment to a specific vision has aided Texas in manifesting a body of work that they can be proud of—even if conventional chart success has had to occasionally find them later. This was true of White on Blonde, a masterwork that struck a cross-generational chord at just the right moment due to it superlative mix of classic and contemporary pop aesthetics. Time has not dulled White on Blonde’s vitality whatsoever—and it never will.
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