BEAUTIFUL SOUTH - A LITTLE TIME

Released: September 24, 1990

Charts: UK: #1 (1 week)

The Beautiful South released “A Little Time” in September 1990, and just a few predicted that this bittersweet, deceptively gentle duet would become the band’s only No. 1 single in the UK. Lifted from their second album, “Choke”, the song marked a shift in the group’s trajectory — away from the wry, politically tinted pop of their debut and toward something more theatrically emotional, sharp-edged, and pointedly human. “A Little Time” became a European success as well, charting inside the Top 20 across Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, and Luxembourg. 

Written by Paul Heaton and guitarist Dave Rotheray, “A Little Time” is a relationship song that doesn’t just explore heartbreak — it shows the ugliness, the pettiness, and the contradictions that come with real romantic conflict. Heaton later admitted the lyrics came from personal experience, describing it simply: “I’ve been in a situation myself where I said, ‘I need a little time.’” But unlike traditional breakup ballads, Rotheray emphasized that this one “doesn’t follow the same path as every other love song.”

The record’s power lies largely in its structure. Briana Corrigan and Dave Hemingway — the band’s twin voices — clash and complement each other in equal measure. Corrigan delivers the verses with bruised clarity, while Hemingway steps in for the chorus, giving the song a conversational tension. In The Beautiful South’s internal logic, this distribution made perfect sense: Hemingway and Corrigan tended to handle the band’s relationship-driven material, while Heaton reserved his voice for the political commentary.

If the song’s lyrical content challenged pop’s polished view of romance, the music video — which won the 1991 Brit Award for British Video of the Year — outright obliterated it. Directed by photographer Nick Brandt, the clip shows the feuding couple moving through the aftermath of a domestic explosion: smashed furniture, flour drifting in the air, feathers littering the room, and, memorably, a teddy bear’s head speared onto a kitchen knife. It was darkly comic, visually arresting, and far from the usual gloss of early-’90s pop videos. It remains the only Brit Award the band has ever won.