Original video located here. Accessed 10th September 2025
Song title: Walk Away
Artist: Franz Ferdinand
Year: 2005
Why I like this song:
Recently I had a listen to Franz Ferdinand's 2005 album You Could've Had it So Much Better for the first time in years.
Like a lot of people I was won over their first album so I was eager for the second one. Now I think we all know this narrative: Band come out of nowhere and has a huge first album. They release a second album - likely built up out of leftovers from the first - but that is greeted with a frosty reception and the band loses a significant amount of momentum.
It has been said that one should not have ALL their best material on their first album as doing so will leave nothing left for the next one. Instead one should have their best material spread out.
Likewise, the common perception is that one has years to write their first album and a much more limited time to write their second.
With this in mind, was You Could've Had it So Much Better a failure? Hard to say: On one hand, there are some great songs but on the other it doesn't seem to have the immediacy of the first album. I mean I recall going back to the first one more than second one.
Still going back to You Could've Had it So Much Better years later and I have found that it was better than I remember. So lets go with that.