Rumor and Sigh

Rumor and Sigh is an album by Richard Thompson released in 1991.

This album is one of the artistic high-points of Thompson's career, and is his most commercially successful album to date. On its release it garnered the usual critical superlatives given to Thompson but sales were also healthy – helped by Capitol's commitment to promoting an artist they regarded as a prestigious signing and by Rumor And Sigh’s nomination for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album (an award eventually won by R.E.M.). The album represents the third collaboration between Thompson and producer Mitchell Froom.

The album shows Thompson's broad stylistic range to good effect and includes what has become one of his best-loved songs – "1952 Vincent Black Lightning". The song is the tale of star-crossed lovers, Red Molly and James, and the motor bike that brings them together. It is set in a traditional English melody and structure and uses, as Thompson describes it, the "bright language" of the ballad tradition. It is played in a style reminiscent of early 20th century American folk music. It is a perennial favourite with his fans and is regularly played by Thompson in concert. Interviewed in the 2003 BBC documentary Solitary Life, Thompson said: "When I was a kid, that was always the exotic bike, that was always the one, the one that you went "ooh, wow". I'd always been looking for English ideas that didn't sound corny, that had some romance to them, and around which you could pin a song. And this song started with a motorcycle, it started with the Vincent. It was a good lodestone around which the song could revolve".

The song was subsequently a big hit on the bluegrass charts for Del McCoury, and has become a modern bluegrass standard, well known by musicians otherwise unfamiliar with Thompson. It also appears on Bùrach's 1995 Album The Weird Set, Greg Brown's 1995 live album "The Live One", Dick Gaughan's 1996 album Sail On, Mary Lou Lord's 2000 album Live City Sounds, the Del McCoury Band's 2001 album Del and the Boys, The Mammals' 2002 album Evolver, Reckless Kelly's 2006 live album Reckless Kelly Was Here, Joel Fafard's 2010 album "Cluck Old Hen" as well as Scott Wade and Melinda McPeek's The Pearl St. Sessions.

"Backlash Love Affair" weds medieval horns to a piece of cod heavy-metal, "Why Must I Plead" combines soul with a country fiddle, and "Keep Your Distance" has a hurdy gurdy solo by Thompson. Thompson also takes a wry dig at himself and simultaneously pays a tribute to one of his influences in "Don't Sit On My Jimmy Shands".

In a 2005 interview on South African radio station SAfm Thompson explained that the albums that he considered "successful" were those where the finished product most closely matched his initial concept. Rumor And Sigh, he said, was one of his most successful records by this yardstick.