'Hit Parade' LP Re-Released

The Wedding Present's 'Hit Parade' album was re-issued on vinyl and CD by Sony Legacy Records on 23 September 2022.

In 1992, The Wedding Present released a limited edition single every month, each featuring an original track on the A side and a cover on the B side. The tracks were compiled on two albums: 'Hit Parade 1' [released in June 1992] containing the first six 7” tracks and 'Hit Parade 2' [released January 1993] containing the final six. In celebration of its 30th anniversary, the two albums were brought together to be reissued on double vinyl and double CD sets. Both come with brand-new artwork encompassing all of the sleeves from the original 7” releases.

The 'Hit Parade' was an audacious plan for The Wedding Present – coming, as it did, after three critically acclaimed studio albums: 'George Best' [1987], 'Bizarro' [1989] and 'Seamonsters' [1991]. But any fears that the project would fail were blown away when all twelve singles went on to chart in the UK Top 40, equalling a record set by Elvis Presley in 1957 for most hits in a year. 15,000 copies of each single were pressed and most of them sold out within days of release in a campaign that was met with huge acclaim from critics and the public alike.

To buy the 'vinyl plus CD' version, please click here.

To buy the CD version, please click here.

David Gedge looks back:

“We only thought about doing the 'Hit Parade' in November, 1991. When our bass player, Keith, first came up with the idea, we all got so excited about it that none of us wanted to wait fourteen months before starting! So, we didn’t really have any kind of strategy in place until after we’d started writing the songs. In hindsight, it probably would’ve been wiser to have them all written and recorded and ready to go, but then that sounds a little bit cynical and calculated. We liked the idea of the spontaneity and we thought the song-writing might evolve over the year, too.

“The fact that each of them was a hit single was an exciting by-product, but we did have this feeling that we wouldn’t let the project take over what we do… which is write songs and make records. If we’d have felt that we were continuing the project just because we wanted to have hit singles, I’m confident that we would’ve just ended the series. Naturally, we quickly began to anticipate that they might all be hits but, if you listen to some of the later ones, they don’t sound even remotely poppy or commercial. If they hadn’t’ve all been hits it wouldn’t have been the end of the world.

“By the middle of the year, we were starting to get worried that possibly the music was being overlooked because the series had become so successful. We’d be saying, “The project is all very exciting and everything but there are actually some quite good songs in there as well, if you’d care to listen!”

“We had the agreement between us that if we felt that the music was suffering, we would stop the series there and then because it wasn’t that important to us. But we never reached that point; I’m very proud of all of the releases.”

Track-listing: Blue Eyes / Go Go Dancer / Three / Silver Shorts / Come Play With Me / California / Flying Saucer / Boing! / Loveslave / Sticky / The Queen Of Outer Space / No Christmas / Cattle And Cane / Don't Cry No Tears / Think That It Might / Falling / Pleasant Valley Sunday / Let's Make Some Plans / Rocket / Theme From Shaft / Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family / Go Wild In The Country / U.F.O. / Step Into Christmas

“Casually revolutionary and underhandedly unique” [NME]