The band was known for blending overt socialist politics and a form of Christianity, having baited the British monarchy, the building industry, and South African apartheid in their songs as well as including gospel elements in their music.

Heaton and Hemingway immediately began work on setting up a new band, naming it "the Beautiful South" as a sarcastic comment on their staunch Northern roots.

The third initial bandmember was Dave Rotheray, a songwriting guitarist who had previously played with Hemingway in two other Hull bands, the Newpolitans and the Velvetones.

The core band was completed by Dave Stead (ex-Luddites/Vicious Circle) on drums, and former Housemartins roadie Sean Welch on bass guitar.

Topics included nationalism, domestic violence, football hooliganism and the self-serving industry of love songs, and the album's disturbing cover art also drew attention.

Two singles—"My Book" and "Let Love Speak Up Itself"—charted outside the Top 40, but the album also provided the band's only Number 1 hit, a Hemingway/Corrigan duet called "A Little Time".

Her contribution helped to characterise the bittersweet kitchen sink dramas played out in the band's often barbed songs, and allowed Heaton and Rotheray to explore and express female perspectives in their songwriting.

Although her decision was partly prompted by a desire to record and promote her own material (which was not getting exposure within the Beautiful South), she had also had ethical disagreements over some of Heaton's lyrics, most notably "Mini-correct", "Worthless Lie" and the 0898 Beautiful South single "36D", which criticised the British glamour industry via scathing comments about glamour models.

Hits included "Good as Gold (Stupid as Mud)" and a cover of Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'", previously popularised by Harry Nilsson.

In 1997, the Beautiful South headlined stadium concerts for the first and last time, in Huddersfield and at Crystal Palace National Sports Centre in London.

The album is also notable for being more uptempo, and being the first on which Heaton and Hemingway's former Housemartins colleague Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim) was used in a consultancy role.

Jacqui Abbott left the band in the same year, discouraged by the pressures of touring and needing to concentrate on looking after her son, who had just been diagnosed with autism.

The lineup recorded Gaze in 2003, following it with 2004's Golddiggas, Headnodders and Pholk Songs, an album of unusually arranged cover tunes, including "Livin' Thing", "You're the One That I Want", "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and "I'm Stone in Love With You".

A track from the album, "This Old Skin", was presented as a cover of a song by an obscure band called "The Heppelbaums"; it was later revealed to be an original Heaton/Rotheray composition.