The Blue Nile: Real Music

Cooper Bentley
7 days ago
5 min read

4 Albums in 20 Years

The Blue Nile’s discography spanned just 4 albums in 20 years before disbanding and leaving behind a quiet influence on contemporary music. The three Glasgow natives went from teaching jobs to a career that appealed to them more, and soon after, released their first single, “I Love This Life", in 1981. Their meticulous recording process and mindset of holding themselves to releasing music nothing short of

exemplary led to fans waiting 5 to 8 years between albums. The Blue Nile wasn’t interested in sitting down and composing a song they thought would be “good,” but added whatever they felt already existed in the song, and just didn’t have it yet. When speaking on the purpose of The Blue Nile’s music, Paul Buchanan states, “We’re always trying to reach that same part of people – the part that reacts to true things, be it literature, art, somebody speaking to them on the street, whatever. The important moments.” To better understand the aesthetic of The Blue Nile’s songwriting, themes, and atmosphere, is a verse from their song “The Downtown Lights”:

“Tonight and every night

Let's go walking down this empty street

Let's walk in the cool evening light

Wrong or right, be at my side

The downtown lights”

Space and Time

Almost all of their songs are about love while simultaneously painting a scenic picture. Space is arguably the most vital component to understanding their music. Embracing new technology led to adding a distinct visualization to their music. When speaking on the use of the new device, the sampler, in their music, member Robert Bell states, “This is the backdrop to the Walk Across The Rooftops track … We did the first album with a great deal of indoor and outdoor sampling; we must have hit every object within a 10-mile radius of the studio.” A Walk Across The Rooftops was the group's debut album in 1984, and while it only reached 80 on the UK Album Charts, it was critically praised, with a review from Melody Maker stating, “The Blue Nile's stunning debut album seduces the emotions as well as the senses, and instead of fighting its effect, the sensible thing to do is relax and enjoy it.” The Blue Nile didn’t subscribe to any ‘scene’ and were hard to compare to anything else due to their idiosyncratic sound, setting themselves apart from anything else being released after just one album.

Setting Music on Fire

Their magnum opus, definitive album Hats, was released on October 16th, 1989. However, many of the master tapes they originally recorded for their second album had been set on fire by the group. For context, legend has it that technology company Linn Productions gave money for The Blue Nile’s first album to play around with and use whatever synthesizers and drum machines they pleased, to almost serve as a commercial for Linn’s products. When their debut album didn’t do the numbers they were hoping for, Linn backed out. Virgin stepped in to help promote their music in North America while also supplying funding for a follow-up album. As the recording sessions went on, The Blue Nile felt that what they were making was subpar, but Virgin grew tired of their antics and demanded to hear samples so they could put together a second album sooner. With the daunting realization that The Blue Nile could possibly release music they didn’t feel was good enough, they took most of the tapes from these recording sessions to a Scottish playground and lit them on fire. After round 2 of recording sessions was more productive but at a slower pace, Virgin forced them out of the studio and sent them home, which is where they wrote the majority of Hats. In a 2012 interview, Paul recalls the moment by saying, “There was a lot we threw away that was half-formed. We went into the studio too soon – we were under pressure to make another record. The bravery of [what we did], if that’s an applicable word, was we eventually said: Enough. Stop. The studio was a Victorian schoolhouse; we took the master tapes and wiped a lot of things – the rest we took out into the playground and set it on fire. It was completely liberating.”

Real Music

When speaking on the recording of their song “The Downtown Lights”, keyboardist Paul Moore recalled, “It wasn't complicated, it was a song which I suppose basically existed. Paul [Buchanan] played it on guitar and we just joined in with each other.” Garnering the status as “perfectionists” doesn’t seem like the right term for their recording process, as they were, in a way, anything but. What The Blue Nile valued more than anything was the quality of their music and its impact, but they didn’t work away meticulously at a song to get it to a point they were hoping to reach. For the group, either a song worked or it didn’t. After the release of their debut album, Paul reminisced about their tour, saying, “Was a guy and a girl standing in Oxford Street… They were obviously having a moment—breaking up or something, something that was wrong—and you just looked at it and knew the feeling. It was a brilliant reminder of what’s worth all the hassle.” Focusing more on raw emotions and feelings than something forced was something they prioritized, which explains why they made songs they felt already existed. Paul states, “We didn’t want it to sound like it was made in a recording studio: we wanted the guitar to sound like the traffic. We wanted height.”

A Voice of Melancholy and Love

Adding to this realist approach to making music, another key aspect in understanding their music would be Paul Buchanan’s voice. His voice can break your heart and patch it up in the duration of the same song. For someone who belittles his own musical ability as much, he can belt on atmospheric, ambient production and also convey unfiltered emotions on some of the group’s ballads. For his lyrics conveying feelings of finding or losing love, his voice serves as a perfect vehicle to get these emotions across in his soft, gentle delivery. Most notably, he simply puts at the beginning of the song “Saturday Night” by saying:

“Who do you love

When it’s cold and it’s starlight?

When the streets are so big and wide

I love you”

Legacy and Whispering Influence

The group released two more albums, Peace at Last in 1996 and High in 2004, before disbanding in 2008. When speaking on the group's breakup, Paul says, “I’ve got nothing negative to say about it. It’s like love in the regard that you have to accept that there are some periods that are mysterious to you.” As time progressed, a cult following was built by the inaccessibility of their music, reclusive band members, and lengthy periods between releases. Had someone been a freshman in high school when Hats was released, they would be graduating from college at the time Peace at Last was released. Holding yourself to the standard that The Blue Nile set over 20 years would be mentally taxing, but the legacy they left with their music is nothing to dismiss. The 1975’s Matty Healy has labelled The Blue Nile as one of his greatest influences, and Taylor Swift even name-dropped the band on 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department. Their lasting legacy can be attributed to what they valued when making music: real emotions, real places, and real sounds.