Skylarking

Virgin executives threatened in early 1986 to drop XTC unless the next album sold more than 70,000 copies, and handed the band a list of American producers. The only name they recognised was Todd Rundgren, who offered to make the whole record for a lump sum of $150,000. In January 1986 Partridge and Moulding mailed him more than twenty demos. Rundgren suggested a concept album and sequenced the songs himself under the provisional title Day Passes. Moulding ended up with five songs on the record, more than usual.

Most of the recording was done at Rundgren's Utopia Sound studio in Woodstock, with drums added in San Francisco by the Tubes' Prairie Prince. Rundgren supplied string and brass arrangements and an assortment of equipment that included a Fairlight sampler and a LinnDrum. The band routinely played the theme from The Munsters when he arrived. Partridge compared the struggle between himself and Rundgren to two Hitlers in the same bunker, while Rundgren said the finished album sounds as if they were having a great time making it.

Release and reception

Lead single Grass came out in the UK in August 1986 with Dear God on its B-side. Dear God had been kept off the album because Virgin's Jeremy Lascelles worried about the running time and about upsetting American listeners. After American college radio DJs played imported copies, Geffen recalled the album and re-pressed it with the song. Skylarking reached number 90 in the UK and number 70 in the US in June 1987, and sold more than 250,000 copies.

Rolling Stone's Tim Sommer wrote that it was the most inspired and satisfying Beatle-esque pop since the Beatles. Rolling Stone placed it at 48 on its 1989 list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s, and Pitchfork put it at 15 on its 2002 list of the 1980s. Partridge later wrote that Rundgren "conjured up some of the most magical production and arranging conceivable." In 2010 a mastering engineer found a wiring error that had made the album sound thin, and Ape House issued a corrected master. Steven Wilson's 5.1 mixes appeared in 2016, with a Dolby Atmos edition in 2024.