1994 album by The Cardigans
Track listing
1. Sick & Tired
2. Black Letter Day
3. In The Afternoon
4. Over The Water
5. After All...
6. Cloudy Sky
7. Our Space
8. Rise & Shine
9. Celia Inside
10. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
11. Seems Hard
12. Last Song
Emmerdale was the debut album of The Cardigans (note: the album's art capitalizes it emmerdale). It's quite curious to name an album after a soap opera, particularly an album with a Black Sabbath cover, albeit a lounge-y jazzy one like this Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.
The Cardigans released this album after Tore Johansson took these unexperienced musicians who just wanted to be "bigger than The Beatles" and had heavy metal and jazz influences. Magical Mystery took them under his wing and he helped create The Cardigans' distinctive sound (that is, until on First Band on the Moon and, especially Gran Turismo they went on to redefine themselves and explore new musical ground).
At this stage, besides their particular pop, only Nina's great voice and Bengt's distinctive drumming were their musical assets. Their performing skills were still average and the band was only a studio band at that moment.
But they were fresh yet twisted. The booklet's photos, featuring the band members on the countryside, and a weird blurry cover photo of a dog, show a perhaps artificial look of youth and candidness, which then goes on to clash with the duality of their music. The jazz-sweet-pop in the music, and the sour lyrics contained inside. Though Emmerdale stresses the theme of The Unbearable Lightness of Being or rather, not being able of getting out of bed in the morning, Emmerdale talks about death, loss and loneliness, stuff that gets amplified thanks to the sweet, sweet music.
Though Sick & Tired made a nice splash as a single, big international success only came on the following Life, which remade some of Emmerdale's tracks and added a few.