Happy Anniversary: Erasure, The Circus

29 years ago today, Erasure released their second studio album, an effort which – although it didn’t send any singles into the Billboard Hot 100 – saw the duo of Andy Bell and Vince Clarke making their debut on Top 200 Albums chart.

With The Circus, Erasure followed the old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” when it came to its production, sticking with the man who’d twiddled the knobs for their debut album, Wonderland: Flood, a guy who has – as you probably know – continued to do pretty well for himself in the intervening years. When the album was released, it proved to be a smash in the UK, cementing Erasure as a chart force to be reckoned with, to the point where it remains their album that’s spent the longest amount of time on the UK charts.

Mind you, there’s a reason for that: it contains three top-10 singles – “Sometimes,” “”Victim of Love,” and the title track – along with the #12 hit, “It Doesn’t Have To Be.”

In the US, though, Erasure’s singles success was limited solely to the dance chart, although it can at least be said that they did pretty darned well on that chart: “Sometimes” hit #4, and “Victim of Love” went all the way to the top spot. Plus, as noted a few paragraphs ago, The Circus also cracked the Billboard Top 200, hitting #190, and when Erasure released its companion remix album, The Two-Ring Circus, their new American fanbase managed to send that to #186.

Oh, don’t scoff: it’s a start. More importantly, it’s one that Erasure further built on with The Innocents in 1988, when they made it all the way to #49 on the Top 200 and, with the help of its two top-20 singles, “Chains of Love” and “A Little Respect.”