Unfinished Sympathy

Shara Nelson had sung with the group in their Wild Bunch days, including on their 1986 single The Look of Love. Unfinished Sympathy grew from a song she was writing under the working title Kiss and Tell. While the group worked on Blue Lines at the Coach House in Bristol, they overheard her singing the melody and, with Jonny Dollar, encouraged her to develop it. The title, a pun on Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, came up during a jam session as a joke that happened to fit.

Dollar first wrote the string parts on a synthesiser. Vowles said it sounded too tacky, and the group switched to real strings. Dollar, who was not trained to orchestrate them, brought in Wil Malone to arrange and conduct, and they were recorded at Abbey Road. The orchestra was not in the budget, and the group sold their car to pay for it. Vowles added scratching and drum programming. The song uses a percussion break from J. J. Johnson's Parade Strut and a "hey, hey" vocal from the Mahavishnu Orchestra's Planetary Citizen, and the album version has no traditional bass line.

Single and video

It was released on 11 February 1991 under the name Massive. The Gulf War had begun, the BBC had deemed the full name unpatriotic, and the record company advised dropping the word Attack to avoid a radio ban. It reached number 13 in the UK, number 3 on the UK Dance Singles Chart, and number one on the Dutch Top 40. Baillie Walsh's video is a single Steadicam shot of Nelson walking through Los Angeles, with the three men a few paces behind her, slightly out of focus. Leigh Bowery was its art director, and six takes were recorded. Melody Maker named it its single of the year for 1991, and Pitchfork ranked it 44th among the tracks of the 1990s in 2010.