Endless Art

"Endless Art"
Single by A House
from the album I Am the Greatest
Released1992
GenreIndie rock
LabelSetanta Records
Songwriter(s)A House
Producer(s)Edwyn Collins, Dale Griffin

"Endless Art" is a song by Irish indie rock band A House, released initially as the lead track on the Bingo EP (1991), and then as a single from their 1991 album I Am the Greatest. It was later included on the greatest hits album The Way We Were.

After the commercial failure of their 1990 album I Want Too Much, A House had been dropped from their label Blanco y Negro Records, to be picked up by the indie label Setanta Records. They quickly released the EPs Doodle and Bingo at the end of 1990 and in 1991. The latter included the first appearance of "Endless Art", which A House recorded with Edwyn Collins as producer.[1] Collins went on to work with them on I Am the Greatest from which "Endless Art" was re-released as a single, accompanied by a video.[2]

Although the song did not enjoy huge chart success, it reached number 46 in the UK - an achievement by A House's standards - and it gained a certain amount of airplay on MTV Europe. The lyrics to "Endless Art" begin with the line "All art is quite useless according to Oscar Wilde" and for their remainder are mostly a list of the names and birth and death dates of artists from various fields, with the chorus remark: "all dead but still alive, in endless time and endless art". This "list" style of song is characteristic of many of Dave Couse's songs. The majority of the lyrics are declaimed rather than sung, over a repetitive electric guitar motif. Melodically, the song features a quotation from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in the chorus.

Video

"Endless Art" was accompanied by an innovative[opinion] stop-motion video which received a lot of praise[by whom?]. When Paul King played the video on his final MTV's Greatest Hits show, as one "of those videos that I really do think deserve to be called great and classic"[citation needed], alongside others such as "Thriller" and "Ashes to Ashes".

Sexism

For the first appearance of the song on Bingo, the band received some criticism for the fact that the artists listed in the song are all male, so they recorded a second version where all the artists are female.[3] This is the version called "More Endless Art". In "More Endless Art", the melodic quotation from Beethoven is substituted with one from Carl Orff.

Updated version

Dave Couse has subsequently performed a live version of "Endless Art" with a new list of artists, those deceased since the original release of the song. This is available as "Endless Art 06" on the B-side of his 2006 single "A Celebration".

Track listings

Bingo
EP by
A House
Released1991
GenreIndie rock
LabelSetanta Records
ProducerEdwyn Collins

"Endless Art" single (1992)

  1. "Endless Art"
  2. "Freak Show"*
  3. "More Endless Art"
  4. "Charity"*

∗ From a live recording for a John Peel session on February 2, 1992.[4]

  • All songs written by A House.
  • Produced by Edwyn Collins (1, 3) and Dale Griffin (2, 4).[2][4]

Bingo EP (1991)

  1. "Endless Art"
  2. "Our Love Is Good Enough"
  3. "Slipping Away"
  4. "Baby You're Too Much"
  • All songs written by A House.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b "Listing for "Bingo" EP at Discogs.com". Discogs.com. Retrieved October 10, 2011.
  2. ^ a b "Listing for "Endless Art" single at Discogs.com". Discogs.com. Retrieved October 10, 2011.
  3. ^ Strong, Martin Charles (2003). "A House". The Great Indie Discography (2 ed.). Canongate Books. p. 90.
  4. ^ a b "BBC Peel Session info". BBC. 1992-02-02. Retrieved October 10, 2011.