Paul Heaton is an English singer and songwriter from the UK pop and alternative music scene. He is best known as a member of The Beautiful South and as a former member of The Housemartins, which he forms in the early 1980s. Heaton is also the father of two daughters and has never married.

Career

Heaton starts out in The Housemartins, a band that disbands in 1988 after releasing several singles and two studio albums, London 0 Hull 4 and The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death. The group’s best-known hit is an a cappella cover of the Isley Brothers’ Caravan of Love, which reaches Christmas number one in the UK.

In 1988, Heaton forms The Beautiful South after The Housemartins end. The band scores top ten singles with Song for Whoever and You Keep It All In, the latter featuring Irish singer Briana Corrigan. Corrigan joins as a full-time member by the time the band releases Welcome to the Beautiful South in 1989.

The Beautiful South’s biggest single success is A Little Time, which reaches number one in 1991. The band then releases 0898 Beautiful South in 1993. In 1994, Corrigan leaves and Jacqui Abbott joins as female vocalist. During the recording of Miaow, Heaton becomes increasingly frustrated with the band’s direction. After the single Prettiest Eyes, the label suggests a greatest-hits compilation, and Carry on up the Charts is released in December 1994. It sells extremely well, goes platinum, and becomes one of the biggest-selling albums in UK history.

The band returns with the number one album Blue Is the Colour, followed by another chart-topping album, Quench. After Painting It Red in 2000, Abbott leaves to care for her son. A second compilation, Solid Bronze, appears, and the band later records two albums with Alison Wheeler as vocalist. Gaze is the first Beautiful South album not to reach the top 10, and the band is then dropped by Mercury Records.

After signing to Sony, The Beautiful South release the covers album Goldiggas, Headnodders and Pholk Songs in 2004. It includes interpretations of songs associated with ELO, Blue Öyster Cult, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, S Club 7, and Rufus Wainwright. The band’s 2006 album Superbi receives generally positive reviews and has a more alt-country sound than earlier releases, with slide guitar and a dobro appearing on the record. In an ITV documentary broadcast in 2006, Heaton speaks about his atheism and his alcoholism.

Style and themes

Heaton’s writing with The Beautiful South ranges from chart pop to more eccentric and melancholic material. Miaow is described as among his more depressing work, and Blue Is the Colour is noted as even sadder. Across the band’s later records, the arrangement style shifts at times toward alt-country while retaining the group’s unusual lyrical and musical approach.