"Letter from America" | ||||
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Single by The Proclaimers | ||||
from the album This Is the Story | ||||
A-side | "Letter From America (Band Version)" | |||
B-side | "Letter From America (Acoustic Version)" "I'm Lucky" | |||
Released | 1987 | |||
Studio | Comfort's Place, Lingfield, Surrey | |||
Length | 4:00 | |||
Label | Chrysalis Records Ltd. | |||
Songwriter(s) | Reid & Reid | |||
Producer(s) | Gerry Rafferty & Hugh Murphy | |||
The Proclaimers singles chronology | ||||
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"Letter from America" is a song written and performed by Scottish band The Proclaimers, that appears on their 1987 debut album, This Is the Story .
The track was a Top 3 hit in Ireland and the United Kingdom, whilst making the Top 30 in Belgium and The Netherlands and also charting in Germany.
Lyrically, the song reflects Scotland's long history of emigration, with Scots leaving behind economic depression in their own nation to start new lives in America and Canada ("the day you sailed from Wester Ross to Nova Scotia"). There is also an allusion to the enforced emigrations of the Highland Clearances when wealthy landowners forcibly evicted whole communities in order to turn their land over to the more profitable enterprise of raising sheep, and comparison of the impact of the Highland clearances to that of 1980s Thatcherite economic policies.
Both of these themes are portrayed on the sleeve artwork for the single - a painted image of a man and woman from the time of the clearances (from the John Watson Nicol painting Lochaber No More) [1] superimposed onto a black-and-white photograph of the interior of Gartcosh steel works after its closure in 1986.
The song was later recorded, as a single, in a fuller arrangement with producer Gerry Rafferty, [2] and became a hit in November 1987, peaking at No. 2 and No. 3 on the Irish Singles Chart and UK Singles Chart in November 1987 and December 1987 respectively. The single was released in 7", 12", and 10" versions.
The 10" vinyl single of the song featured an unusual double groove pressing, with the two versions - acoustic and orchestral - interwoven on the same side of the disc, so that placing the needle on the record would result in a random playing of one or the other version. [3]
The song appears in the 1991 film The Commitments , playing in the background at a wedding, and also in the 2013 film Sunshine On Leith , along with several other Proclaimers songs.
In February 2014, the song was parodied by Scottish Labour Party leader Johann Lamont during a session of First Minister's Questions after the savings and investment business Standard Life said it might leave Scotland if the country voted to separate from the United Kingdom. [4] The Reid brothers (who are themselves both vocal supporters of Scottish independence and the Scottish National Party) subsequently issued a statement criticising Lamont for "distorting our song as part of Labour's anti-independence cabal with the Tories". [5]
Personnel are taken from the CD single liner notes [6]
Chart (1987) | Peak position |
---|---|
Ireland (IRMA) [7] | 2 |
UK Singles (OCC) [8] | 3 |
Lochaber is a name applied to a part of the Scottish Highlands. Historically, it was a provincial lordship consisting of the parishes of Kilmallie and Kilmonivaig. Lochaber once extended from the Northern shore of Loch Leven, a district called Nether Lochaber, to beyond Spean Bridge and Roybridge, which area is known as Brae Lochaber or Braigh Loch Abar in Gaelic. For local government purposes, the name was used for one of the landward districts of Inverness-shire from 1930 to 1975, and then for one of the districts of the Highland region from 1975 to 1996. Since 1996 the Highland Council has had a Lochaber area committee.
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The Proclaimers are a Scottish rock duo formed in 1983 by twin brothers Craig and Charlie Reid. They came to attention with their 1987 single "Letter from America", which reached No. 3 in the United Kingdom, and the 1988 single "I'm Gonna Be ", which topped charts in Australia, Iceland and New Zealand. The duo's biggest album, Sunshine on Leith (1988) has been certified multi-Platinum in Australia and Canada, selling over 2 million copies worldwide, including around 700,000 in the United States. The Proclaimers have sold over 5 million albums worldwide.
"Stuck in the Middle with You" is a song written by Scottish musicians Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan and performed by their band Stealers Wheel.
Gerald Rafferty was a Scottish singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. He was a founding member of Stealers Wheel, whose biggest hit was "Stuck in the Middle with You" in 1973. His solo hits in the late 1970s included "Baker Street", "Right Down the Line", and "Night Owl".
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