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1979 single by The Boomtown Rats

"Diamond Smiles" was the second single from The Boomtown Rats` album The Fine Art of Surfacing. It was the follow-up to their successful single "I Don`t Like Mondays" and peaked at Number 13 in the UK Charts. The band has suggested that it might have fared better had it not been for a strike of lighting technicians on the powerful UK TV programme Top of The Pops at the time that the record was released and rising in the charts.[3]

Dealing with death, as had "I Don`t Like Mondays", the song tells the story of a glamorous debutante (`Diamond`) who commits suicide and is remembered only for her low-cut dress.[4] Some of the staff of Duke Street Hospital, in Glasgow, filed a petition with the IBA and the BBC demanding that the song be banned due to the lyrics exploiting a real-life suicide.[5]

The song also featured as one of four songs on an Australian EP called Surface Down Under that also featured past hits "Rat Trap", "Looking After No.1" and "Like Clockwork".[3]

The song was covered by Jay Bennett (of Wilco) on his posthumous album Kicking at the Perfumed Air, with the album`s title also being derived from the song`s lyrics.[6]

Reception

In a review of the album The Fine Art of Surfacing, critic Mike DeGagne said "`Diamond Smiles` jaunts along on a hiccup-like rhythm".[7]

Smash Hits said, "It`s puzzling that The Rats should have chosen this rather lifeless tale of high-society suicide as the follow up to "Mondays". It`s tougher and more compact than their recent singles but I thought they`d have put aside the subject of violent death for a while."[8]

Decades later, Penny Black Music commented on the band`s connection to Ireland:"The song reflected the Dublin that had changed before the band’s very eyes. It was no longer the city of saints, but a reservoir of bankers, gangsters and sex."[9]