Wiki
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Release Date
9 November 1981
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Length
11 tracks
La Folie is the sixth album by The Stranglers, recorded and released in 1981.
The Stranglers had initially been the most commercially successful band of the punk/new-wave period in Britain, but by 1981, their success had waned noticeably. The La Folie album was a conscious attempt to deliver a more commercial product. The band's record company, EMI, sent them into the studio with famous producer Tony Visconti, giving him a brief to "produce each song as if it was a hit single".
The album’s French language title "La Folie" literally translates into English as "Madness". In various interviews, the band related that this referred to "The Madness of Love" and that conceptually, each of the songs on the album was intended to explore a different kind or aspect of "love".
The title track is also said to be based upon the story of Issei Sagawa.
The track "Golden Brown" gave the band the renewed commercial success they were seeking; released as a single, it reached No. 2 in the UK chart in January 1982, and went on to become EMI's highest selling single for many years. Many buyers were seemingly unaware of the meaning of the lyrics, which contain metaphorical references to heroin. This may have been further confused by different band members claiming that the song was about desertification, imperialism and as said in an interview, "toast".
Other singles from the album were: "Let Me Introduce You to the Family" (No. 42 in November 1981) and the title-track, "La Folie", which reached No. 47 in April 1982. Upon release "La Folie" looked set to be the band's lowest-charting album, but, buoyed by the success of "Golden Brown", the album eventually peaked at no.11 in the UK album chart, and spent 18 weeks on the chart.
Hugh Cornwell related in The Stranglers – Song by Song that the correct title of the album's opening track was in fact "Non Stop Nun", and he apparently had been unaware that the record company had printed it as simply "Non Stop".
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