Songs About Fucking


Songs About Fucking is the second full-length and final studio album by the punk rock band Big Black, released in 1987 by Touch and Go records. The album includes a rendition of Kraftwerk's "The Model" in a remixed version from that which appeared on Big Black's then-recent single. The compact disc of Songs About Fucking added the other side of that single, a cover of Cheap Trick's "He's a Whore".

Production

has said that Songs About Fucking is the Big Black album that he is most satisfied with. In a 1992 interview with Maximumrocknroll magazine, Albini said:
The band had already decided to split up before the album was recorded, prompted by guitarist Santiago Durango's decision to enroll in law school, and the band's desire to quit while at their peak.

Critical reception

Songs About Fucking has been called "certainly the most honest album title of the rock 'n' roll era". Lyrical themes on the album include South American killing techniques, bread that gets you high, and how "slowly, without trying, everyone becomes what he despises most". While the album's title and the sleeve were controversial, according to one reviewer, "as brutal as that cover is, the music is even more so", and it was considered "as dark and frightening as the band name suggests" by another, Treble's Hubert Vigilla, who goes on to say "Songs About Fucking is loud, it's abrasive, it's unattractive in the extreme ... So really, it's everything that made Big Black so great in the first place". Dave Henderson of Underground magazine gave the album a 2.5/3 rating, calling it "a napalm attack that sticks to your skin like burning party-jell, spiced with hundreds and thousands, a prickly sensation that's as all-consuming as it is repellent".

Accolades

PublicationCountryAccoladeRank
PitchforkUS"The Top 100 Albums of the 1980s"54
PitchforkUS"The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s"135
Beats Per MinuteUS"The Top 100 Albums of the 1980s"47
TerrorizerUK"Terrorizer Albums Of The Eighties"-
The GuardianUK"1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die"-
NMEUK"The 50 Albums That Built Punk"33
RockdeluxSpain"The 100 Best Albums of the 1980s"39
RockdeluxSpain"The 200 Best Albums of All Time"99
RockdeluxSpain"300 best albums from 1984-2014"136

Track listing

Personnel