The beautiful South were an English pop-rock group formed in 1988 by two former members of The Housemartins Paul Heaton and Dave Hemingway.
Their song ‘Perfect 10’ was released in September of 1998 as the first single from their sixth album ‘Quench’.
The song, as performed in the video by lead vocalists Heaton and Jacqui Abbott who appear to be sitting in some sort of waiting room, focuses on loving relationships between couples who don’t need to conform to modern stereotypes of perfection.
This idea of stereotypes could be suggested by the repeated image of magazines with the famous title of ‘Life’. This may be ironic or even satirical as we are aware that lots of different media including magazines tend to promote an idealised image of typical beauty standards and of life itself. The cartoonish image of a larger stout man hand-in-hand with a tall waisted woman along with the lyrics helps to acknowledge the fact that social standards aren’t important and some could say that they’re to be laughed at due to their absurdity.
Clips of the two singers (and later of the other characters in the writing room) in what appears to be a comic X-ray machine implies that love matters only on the inside and therefore should not have anything to do with outward appearance.
The video itself is filled with different characters of sizes and ethnicities and is filled with loud colours such as one man’s bright red outfit or even the garish green coloured walls. This again pushes across the message that love is loud, experimental and free.
Sadly in January 2007, the band split and this may be the reason why they have no website. There is one called ‘The South’ which is home to some of the ex-band members and some new ones in hope of keeping the band’s legacy alive.
Like most websites, there are tabs that help map out the layout of the website although there isn’t any clear indication of any social media accounts even though the original Beautiful South still have a recent Facebook account.
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