It's Great When You're Straight... Yeah
| It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah | ||||
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| Studio album by Black Grape | ||||
| Released | 7 August 1995 | |||
| Genre | Alternative dance, Britpop | |||
| Length | 46:16 | |||
| Label | Radioactive | |||
| Producer | Danny Saber, Stephen Lironi, Shaun Ryder, Gary Kurfirst (exec.) | |||
| Black Grape chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| Robert Christgau |  |
It's Great When You're Straight...Yeah is the first album by British band Black Grape. Released in 1995, the album was a critical and commercial success, particularly in the UK, where it topped the UK Album Charts for two weeks and yielded two Top 10 hit singles and a third Top 20 hit.
The album was seen as something of a triumphant for both Shaun Ryder and Bez, who had suffered from a decline in popularity and interest in their former band, the Madchester and pre-Britpop indie dance/rock innovators, the Happy Mondays. It's Great... represented what some considered an evolution of the Happy Mondays sound on their 1990 album Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches, with a stronger hip hop influence, down mostly to the rapping of Kermit, formerly of the band The Ruthless Rap Assassins. Radioactive Records released three singles from the album, all of which were commercial and critical successes in the UK. "Reverend Black Grape" was released first and reached number 9 in the UK Singles Chart and was followed by "In The Name of the Father", which eclipsed the first single, reaching number 8 in the same chart. A third single, "Kelly's Heroes" also charted within the Top 20 UK Singles Chart, at number 17.
According to Ryder, the album title refers sarcastically to being free of mood-altering substances. The album art features a famous photograph of infamous international terrorist Carlos the Jackal colored in pop art style, and was inspiration for Issue 2 of the Image Comics series, Phonogram.
The opening lines of 'In the Name of the Father' are quoted in the novel The Demented Lands by Alan Warner.
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