Song of the Day 12/12: Supertramp, “Breakfast in America”

Guest post by Nathan Arizona

Supertramp had Breakfast in America in 1979. It was delicious.

The album “Breakfast in America” propelled a mildly successful British band to one whose songs were heard pretty much everywhere. Quadruple platinum. Grammy nominations for best album and best pop vocal. Elaborate critical praise. ”A textbook-perfect album of post-Beatles, keyboard-centered English art rock,” said a Rolling Stone review by Stephen Holden, who’s now writing reviews for the New York Times at age 80.

And it all happened after Supertramp came to this country. The guys had written songs in England about how boring it was there. The song that would become the album’s title track puts a fine point on it. “Take a look at my girlfriend/She’s the only one I got/Not much of a girlfriend/I never seem to get a lot.” But there was hope. “Take a jumbo across the water/Like to see America/See the girls in California.” The album is sometimes thought to be a satirical look at America, partly because of the jokey cover. But sunshine and sexy blondes actually looked pretty good to pale-skinned boys on murky London streets.

They flew to America to record the songs for A&M Records, putting the album together in a camper right outside the studio. These tunes were meant to be popular — more popular than the only somewhat successful prog-like albums they had been putting out. The idea was to simplify their music, make it snappier, make it more pop. Horns and keyboards, not guitars. A bit of music hall. Pop-prog, maybe, although hard-core prog fans probably wouldn’t go even that far.

The name Supertramp came from an actual Welsh tramp named W.H. Davies, whose 1908 ”Autobiography of a Super-Tramp” is still available. It’s fitting that Davies’ favorite place to tramp around in was America. He had no trouble finding his breakfast here.

There are no official videos for the “Breakfast in America” album. But they performed a big concert in Paris right after it came out and there are videos from that. Here’s the song “Breakfast in America.”

There haven’t been many covers, but the hip hop band Gym Class Heroes made good use of it on “Cupid’s Chokehold.”

Besides the title track, three other songs from “Breakfast in America” were chart hits. Here’s one of them.