Black Coffee (All Saints Song)
"Black Coffee" is a song by British girl group All Saints from their second studio album Saints & Sinners (2000). It was released as the second single off the album by London Records worldwide on October 2, 2000. After the success off their single "Pure Shores", the group decided to commence recording and producing their second full-length studio album.
Written by Tom Nichols, Alex von Soos and Kirsty Elizabeth while produced by William Orbit, the song has noted to be similar to the groups previous single which was electronica, trip-hop and dream pop music, but features more a dance-pop style. Though it hasn't been lyrically explain, the song has been referenced as heartbreak and relationship problems. The song received positive reviews from most music critics, praising the composition and vocals from the members, though some critics noted similarities towards their previous single. Many critics also called the song a "hidden gem" and praised William Orbits production.
The song managed to received commercial success as well, but not as similar to "Pure Shores", where it managed to chart inside the top ten in countries including Italy, Sweden, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, where it peaked inside the top twenty in countries including Finland, Australia and Norway. The song was released in North America, but didn't manage to chart. It was also certified silver in the United Kingdom, and sold 212,707 copies to date.
An accompanying music video was shot by Johan Renck, where it featured the group in a luxury apartment with a couple fighting to each other. The video features special effects including Bullet Time, similar to The Matrix. It received positive reviews for the special effects. The video was also the groups first video not to be shot together. The song was performed live on many shows including Top of the Pops and Smash Hits! TV.
Read more about Black Coffee (All Saints Song): Background and Composition, Critical Reception, Chart Performance, Music Video, Formats and Track Listing, Personnel
Famous quotes containing the words black, coffee and/or saints:
“Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,
Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.
My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“It is extraordinary how the house and the simplest possessions of someone who has been left become so quickly sordid.... Even the stain on the coffee cup seems not coffee but the physical manifestation of one’s inner stain, the fatal blot that from the beginning had marked one for ultimate aloneness.”
—Coleman Dowell (1925–1985)
“How marvellous it all is! Built not by saints and angels, but the work of men’s hands; cemented with men’s honest blood and with a world of tears, welded by the best brains of centuries past; not without the taint and reproach incidental to all human work, but constructed on the whole with pure and splendid purpose. Human, and yet not wholly human—for the most heedless and the most cynical must see the finger of the Divine.”
—Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl Rosebery (1847–1929)