Jimmy Somerville’s debut solo album Learn My Lips shall be re-issued by London Information in a wide range of codecs and that includes rarities and new remixes on 1 September 2023. It’s accessible to pre-order right here.

Initially launched in 1989, Learn My Lips garnered Gold standing, with three UK Prime 30 hits and a Prime 5 Hit for Jimmy’s model of Sylvester’s You Make Me Really feel (Mighty Actual). As frontman for Bronski Beat and later with The Communards, in 5 brief years Jimmy had turn into internationally famend to the tune of over 5 million album gross sales, his music recognised worldwide for its themes of celebration, protest and advocacy.

By the tip of the last decade, Jimmy focus had turned full beam to the HIV disaster of the time. As author and activist Paul Burston explains in his new sleeve notes for the album: “5 years have handed since Smalltown Boy. Jimmy has spent a lot of that point in New York, the place he’s seen the devastation of AIDS first hand. He’s misplaced buddies and lovers. In his personal phrases, Smalltown Boy was “far more delicate, emotional, a extra thoughtful plea, whereas Learn My Lips was like, ‘This time the gloves are off’.”

The title Learn My Lips  was a phrase adopted by NYC queer collective Gran Fury, an affiliate of ACT UP, a platform Jimmy was a dedicated member of. Members of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Energy) – a political group working to finish the AIDs disaster – recurrently risked arrest as they stormed workplace buildings, blocked visitors “united in anger” on the lack of information and help for AIDS victims.

Within the lead as much as and throughout the album’s marketing campaign Jimmy and his ACT UP T-shirt had been ubiquitous, from his ‘mainstream’ Prime of The Pops performances and participation in Band Support II, by to the World AIDS Day demonstration the place he and his cohorts had been chained throughout Westminster Bridge, a pressured sit in on the Australian Consulate (for which he was arrested) and urgent an ACT-UP T-shirt into the fingers of then French President Chirac of France.

At a time when the British media had been hellbent on demonizing the lives of the LGBT group Jimmy’s response was to create an album of affection songs for homosexual males – “I refused to let the media dehumanise us.”

Learn My Lips is re-issued as a single LP (the unique 10 monitor album on blue vinyl) and as a deluxe double LP on clear vinyl with remixes from William Orbit, AMYL and B-sides and rarities reminiscent of From This Second On (from Crimson, Scorching + Blue) and I Consider In Love (with Arthur Baker and The Beat Disciples). The double CD model comprises additional remixes from Gerd Janson and Arpeggius; in addition to unreleased demos, B-Sides and rarities.

To rejoice the upcoming launch of the expanded and remastered variations of Learn My Lips, ‘You Make Me Really feel (Mighty Actual)’ is revisited by esteemed Working again label head Gerd Janson, who offers the monitor a thrusting, propulsive re-rub. Take heed to it right here.

Learn My Lips, says Burston, “isn’t merely a time capsule or an train in nostalgia. It’s each of its time and timeless. Listening to it once more now, I’m struck not simply by the recollections it evokes but in addition by the myriad of feelings it stirs up within the listener – defiance, pleasure, disappointment and, sure, anger. They’re all there in Jimmy’s voice – probably the most distinctive within the historical past of pop.”