Good Thing

Together with "She Drives Me Crazy," this is the other one of the Fine Young Cannibals' twin #1 Billboard hits, both pumped out in 1989 from their second album The Raw & The Cooked. They also had another Top-40 hit from the same album, "Don't Look Back" at #11. This pegged Fine Young Cannibals (often abbreviated "FYC," even on the cover of the album) forever in music history as superstars who exploded onto the music scene in one year and were practically forgotten ever since. However in their home turf of Birmingham, England, their fame is somewhat more evenly spread.

"Good Thing" was a worldwide hit, charting #4 on Irish Singles, #7 on Australian ARIA, #8 on German Singles, #12 on Swiss Singles. If we discover life on other planets, we'll probably find out that the song charted high with them, too. To this day you almost can't listen to a whole day of radio without hearing either this or "She Drives Me Crazy."

Fine Young Cannibals rose from the ashes of the UK band The Beat. Sometimes called "The English Beat" to distinguish them from the US Paul Collins' band, The Beat had a number of UK Singles hits including a cover of Smokey Robinson's "Tears Of A Clown," "Mirror in the Bathroom," and "Too Nice To Talk To." When the band broke up in 1983, guitarists David Steele and Andy Cox went on to form FYC with a new vocalist, Roland Gift, whom they carefully chose after eight months of listening to cassettes.