Tinseltown in the Rain

Calum Malcolm played a demo of it to Linn staff testing speakers at Castlesound, and the company offered a contract. The finished vocal was something of an accident: Buchanan worked on it late into the night before the label was due to hear the likely first single, his tired bandmates allowed one more pass to fix a line or two, and that full take became the master. Classic Pop picks out its guitars, hard piano chords and sweeping strings.

Buchanan described a bass that falls like a fire escape and Moore making sounds like tin roofs, meant to give the feeling of looking out over a city. He called Tinseltown a metaphor for whatever someone dreams of or loses, and said the guitars made the band think of traffic. Often heard as an ode to Glasgow, it was the second single from the album, reached 87 for their first UK chart entry and 28 in the Netherlands. Pitchfork called it the closest thing the band have to a signature song, and Tribune reported it as their most streamed. Its rhythm section became the theme of the BBC Scotland drama Tinsel Town.

Live

It is the band's most played song on setlist.fm, in 23 of 57 logged sets from 1990 to 2008. Deacon Blue played it in 1988, Andrea Corr released it as the first single from Lifelines in 2011, and the Twang issued it as a single in 2019. The upload in the hypersongs web is the album version.