Mike & The Mechanics ‎- Living Years (1988)

Living Years is the second album by Mike + The Mechanics, released in 1988. The album reached number 13 on the Billboard 200 and number 2 on the UK Albums Chart.
With The Living Years, Mike + the Mechanics firmly established themselves in the adult contemporary genre after the mid-'80s pop of their debut. Slickly produced with rich vocals from Paul Carrack and Paul Young, The Living Years moves smoothly between anthemic ballads such as the title track and more up-beat numbers such as "Seeing Is Believing." The band even shows a trace of Mike Rutherford's prog rock roots with Genesis on the epic-like, "Why Me?" When the group try their hands at funk, as on "Don't," or harder rock, as on "Black and Blue," they sound quite out of their element. But on mid-tempo tracks with Rutherford's trademark bubbly bass such as "Nobody's Perfect" and "Beautiful Day" and on the infectious "Poor Boy Down" the group display a soulfulness that many in the genre lack even while there is a distinct lack of individuality present in their musicianship.
Mike Rutherford began writing songs for the album in September 1987, shortly after the conclusion of Genesis's Invisible Touch tour. However, he found himself immediately stricken with writer's block, a circumstance he attributes to stress over the complications with his wife's current pregnancy, which nearly ended in the death of the child. The baby (Rutherford's third) was safely delivered in November, and Rutherford said that the relief made him feel "like a new man". In January he entered an extremely prolific songwriting period, and by the end of the month he had what he and producer/co-writer Christopher Neil felt was a good album's worth of material. In light of this, Neil wanted to move up the recording sessions, which had been scheduled for April. Rutherford vetoed the idea, however, and with his burst of inspiration still running, most of the songs that eventually appeared on the album were written over the next two months.[2]
The first single taken off the album, "Nobody's Perfect," peaked at number 63 on the Billboard Hot 100. The next single off the album, "The Living Years", was a worldwide number one hit, reaching that mark on the Billboard Hot 100 chart the week ending 25 March 1989. The song also reached number one on the Australian ARIA singles chart the week ending 13 May 1989. In the United Kingdom, it spent three weeks at number 2 in January and February 1989, behind Marc Almond and Gene Pitney's reworking of "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart."
The song was co-written by Rutherford and B. A. Robertson, both of whose fathers had recently died. However, the lyrics were written solely by Robertson, and dealt with Robertson's strained relationship with his father and the birth of his son three months after his father's death.[3] Paul Carrack, who would sing lead on the recording, had himself lost his father when he was only eleven years old.[4]
A third single off the album, "Seeing is Believing", reached number 62 on the Billboard chart.
Phil Collins and Tony Banks, Rutherford's Genesis bandmates, made a guest appearance playing the riff on "Black & Blue" (a sample by Banks of Collins and Rutherford playing a riff during the Invisible Touch sessions).

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- Источник оцифровки: автор новости (plastinka/nickhome)
- Класс состояния винила: NM
- Устройство воспроизведения: Электроника ЭП-017С
- Картридж: Audio-Technica AT440MLa
- Предварительный усилитель: Самодельный ламповый v2.00
- АЦП: ESI Julia
- Обработка: ручное удаление щелчков
- Формат записи (Bit/kHz): 32 float/96

foobar2000 1.2.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2013-06-21 19:10:28

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Analyzed: Mike & The Mechanics / Living Years
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DR Peak RMS Duration Track
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DR14 -0.10 dB -17.06 dB 4:46 ?-Nobody's Perfect
DR12 -1.49 dB -17.79 dB 5:33 ?-The Living Years
DR12 -2.13 dB -16.72 dB 3:13 ?-Seeing Is Believing
DR12 -2.26 dB -19.18 dB 4:23 ?-Nobody Knows
DR12 -2.81 dB -16.77 dB 4:37 ?-Poor Boy Down
DR12 -1.83 dB -16.53 dB 5:16 ?-Blame
DR15 -1.31 dB -19.52 dB 5:45 ?-Don't
DR13 -1.59 dB -17.74 dB 3:28 ?-Black & Blue
DR13 -1.70 dB -16.73 dB 3:38 ?-Beautiful Day
DR12 -4.54 dB -19.58 dB 6:28 ?-Why Me
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Number of tracks: 10
Official DR value: DR13

Samplerate: 96000 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 32
Bitrate: 3944 kbps
Codec: WavPack