Television Personalities / They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles

1972

Comprised of early singles, demos, outtakes and unreleased tracks recorded between 1979 and 1982, They Could Have Been Bigger Than the Beatles was Television Personalities’ third full-length. The unannotated retrospective is a surprisingly cohesive collection of singular and classic tunes, from the haunting single “Three Wishes” (“If I had three wishes I’d wish for three more”) and the brilliant “David Hockney’s Diaries” (a different and much better version from the one on Mummy Your Not Watching Me) to the perennial punk classic “14th Floor” and the enthusiastically sloppy versions of The Creation’s “Painter Man” and “Making Time,” to the gentle freakbeat of “The Boy in the Paisley Shirt” and “Psychedelic Holiday.” It’s a perfect autumn soundtrack, and autumn is the whole year.  “I should go on, but I can’t so I’d better just tell you that on his last album, They Could Have Been Bigger Than The Beatles, Dan Treacy sings a naked song called ‘Mysterious Ways’ which floods me with adrenalin. Don’t allow any preconceived bias to prevent you from listening. In other words: stop being stupid and get tuned in.” —Melody Maker (1982)

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