Furniture
Furniture were a British group active from the early 1980s to 1991. They are best known for their much-loved single Brilliant Mind, which reached #21 in July 1986.
Unfortunately, Furniture were never able to capitalise on the success of their chart debut due to the collapse of their record company, Stiff. Despite this, they left behind a fascinating history and some of the finest music of the period — 50 songs stretching from their earliest EPs to their final swansong.
This website is a homage to Furniture, pulling together all the material I could find. They deserved a wider audience — an oversight worth correcting. Enjoy.
...when I heard this for the first time. Never forgot it. Well, you can't - can you?
A great UK band indeed...I worked as the interpreter for the band. Had a chance to spend great time with these brilliant young musicians. Still grateful. Eddie
I worked for Arista ... The best band that was betrayed by a record company. Stunningly good, disgracefully sidelined...
this is really the best song ever made about love
The urgency in this song is so brilliantly carved. Atmosphere in abundance. Love it !!!
I'm a huge fan of the 80s scene and Furniture are right up there amongst the best.. how they never made it right to the top is beyond me. Anyhow, I have all their tracks.
I Love this song "Loveme" is my song of all times.
''The Wrong People' was an incredible album. 'I Miss You' is one of my favourite songs ever. How did these young fresh-faced guys write such impressive mature lyrics?
Saw you live in Cambridge spring 1990. Unsurpassed by any band in lyrics, music and style ever since.
Excellent, heartfelt jewel. There is an urgency, an intensity that is very emotional here.
I'm addicted to Furniture's music since 1986 when I bought their LP Wrong People.
Thank you so much for uploading this video ... The whole album by Furniture is a real gem
why Furniture were not and still not the biggest thing since sliced bread is beyond me
As usual, it's yet another fabulous Furniture track. Thank you.
My favourite song of the 80s. Saw them live at Aston Uni in 1988 or 9....30+ years later it's still amazing x
Fantastic track - I can't believe Furniture didn't make it big time.. one of the biggest travesties of the 80s...
A superb album - lucky enough to see Furniture live three times - best band of their generation without question
Such an outstanding group - so lucky to have seen them 3 times live when they toured this album. Not many have touched this level of emotional brilliance and songwriting in the last 30 years.
A superb album and should have been one of those albums that everyone remembered from the 80's.
Τhese are the most epic 2 minutes I ve heard in my life !!
This one brings back memories. My cousin Bennett used to write the lyrics to this one on the inside of cornflakes packets and push them through our neighbours letterbox
Seriously underrated back in the day. I remember buying the 12" of this and I still play it to this day
This band were fabulous in the late 80s and early 90s. One of the best gigs I ever saw at The Duchess of York in Leeds
After Love me this is one of my fav, the Whelan´s voice is more heartbreakin but Jim sing amazing. in this song and i can´t crack is fantastic.
perfectly understated 80's music & lyrics: intelligent & sublime - just like the mainstream 1980s wasn't mostly....
This song is simply divine, why have I only discovered this album until now in November 2022
Perfectly crafted intelligent and heartfelt pop - capturing the mood of the mid 80s perfectly.
One of the greatest songs ever written. Still feels fresh and unique 30-odd years later
How the hell this album wasn’t a massive hit will forever be a travesty of pop music
This song is like a Time Machine transporting me back to the best of times.
Just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Had they been around now with all this exposure they would have been MASSIVE !!!
One of the more sophisticated bands of the mid 80s. Great songs, music and lyrics. Too bad they didn't continue.
Oh, at last! One of my very favourite 80s bands, & a great song to wind down to.
Bless you for uploading this. I had the album on vinyl years ago but parted company with it somehow.
This is quite simply one of the best pop albums going. Musically intricate, involving melodic development and brimming with interesting lyrics which offer a quirky take on the usual pop tropes
The most perfect imaginable slice of intelligent 80s pop. Buy it. Buy two copies and put one in a bank vault. It's that good.
If you don't have it - you should.
The perfect album
The songs were flawless...
The album is almost relentless in it's desire for perfection
If I had to burn my entire music collection and only keep one, I wouldn't even think about it
Nobody else does what Furniture do.
What a life eh, what a record — never knowing from one minute to the next whether you'll be knocked out, or seduced!
They weren't like anybody.
They could switch from Elvis to Elvira to Detroit Emeralds in the nervy twitching of an eyelid.
Only a fool could ignore these songs.
One of the most intelligent hit singles of the Eighties.
An astonishing fusion of pop and bitterness, joie de vivre and pessimism.
Stax for stuntmen in stilettos.
The planet's finest rhythm section.
About as magnificent a monument as the average Michelangelo.
A maverick bunch who made nuanced, designed pop in the Prefab Sprout mould.
Jim Irvin's junior Scott Walker passion is spot on, and the songs are still paramount.
It has hooks down the whole of its length, like some extraordinary fishing-lure.
Soft souls and sharp tongues. Comforting sounds and dangerous desperation.
'Food, Sex And Paranoia' is an exquisite oddity.
An immensely graceful, cruelly smooth swoop through the historical song book.
Fill ordinary stories with the luminescence of stained-glass windows.
'She Gets Out The Scrapbook' is staggeringly emotive, driven along by tortured memories.
The terrifyingly generous 'Make Believe I'm Him' has brass to blast away the most carefully-created cobwebs.
Anthems for bedsit-bound romantics and musical masochists.
One hit but wonderful.
Their dynamic and intelligently conceived art-pop has an attractively decadent air.
Polished pop ironists.
An emotive post-War crooner to squeeze light and shade out of sumptuous melodies and lovelorn and literate lyrics.
The delicious melancholic droop of I Miss You.
A wonderful swirling, whirling potful of different sounds.
SUCH POLISHED POP.
Furniture are not only a technically awesome group, they also know the value of a very well-turned lyric.
Jim Irvin's voice is a perfect vehicle for the sentiments. He is able, without affectation, to project sorrow, mania and despair.
Take a mortgage out on your bedsit and investigate 'The Wrong People' now.
Furniture run up the spinal cord and explode in your head, all pink love and sensuality.
They were here to entertain, to scrub our souls clean and make them shine in the fresh morning light of their songs.
'Song For A Doberman', a solemn ballad coloured by Sally Still's pensive vocal, tears dramatically through the senses.
'Brilliant Mind', now routinely referred to as one of its decade's definitive songs.
Songs about things so wrong you don't want them to be right.
Their songs are forever lifting up rocks to see what's underneath.
This bible of outsiders and misfits.
A gradually building epic of memory, loss and repressed yearning, it is unconscionably strong.
Messed-up Motown-meets-Morricone rushes of giddy pep.
The songs of Furniture inhabit a world where love is real.
Someone should send this record to the moon.
Furniture were consistently misunderstood. There is something very heroic and intriguing about the consistently misunderstood.
Songs to stretch your heartstrings and make you proud you're you.
This album That Should Have Been Huge was chock-full of frisky rhythms, perverted guitar licks and the kind of emotional lyrical openness which terrified passing psychiatrists.
A lost album.
'The Wrong People' was intelligent, eccentric, and even better, accurate.
This week one of the best albums ever recorded becomes available to download.
Some of the most poetic lyrics ever written.
The Wrong People is a theatre of the visceral, a melodrama and gorgeous sax-soaked 1980s pop all at once.
On these 11 tracks, the band play as if their sadness depends upon it. But somehow they transcend miserablism; they inspire.
This dark, almost gothic cult classic.
A true thinking person's pop song, enchanting, melancholy and emotional in tone.
One of the 80s' best-kept secrets.
A trail of sparkling gems.
A torch song so good you'd think Julie London might have cut it.
Both nostalgic and curiously modern.
A mix of bleakness and euphoria.
We were totally prepared to switch lanes on every record.
We are five misfits, we don't quite connect. We are profoundly 'wrong'.
Perfection you can get anytime you want it, just switch on the telly. Flaws you have to hunt for.
'One Step Behind You' should be single of the decade.
I'm an emotional person in a cold bastard's skin.
Explore
History
Origins · Stiff · Exile · Arista · Break-up
Discography
Singles, albums, compilations 1980–2019
Press reviews
16 clippings · NME, Q, Sounds, Melody Maker, Smash Hits & more
Interviews & features
15 articles from 1985 to 2019
Lyrics
50 songs
Gallery
Tour photographs, press photos, sleeve artwork
Live dates
From 1980, sourced from Loud Memories
Listen
Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, YouTube
Videos
TOTP, Janice Long session, band YouTube channel
Cover art
Calum Colvin on The Wrong People; Fornasetti on FSP
After Furniture
Transglobal Underground, Mojo, and the rest
Links
Reissues, interviews, fan pages, curios