Songs for a Blue Guitar is the fifth studio album by Red House Painters, released on July 22, 1996 in the UK, and a day later in the US.

The most popular theory claims the band were dropped because label president Ivo Watts-Russell was unhappy with the lengthy guitar solos in "Make Like Paper" and "Silly Love Songs."

[citation needed] The move to a more corporate label proved to be disastrous for the band, who became stuck in limbo during the major-label mergers of the late 1990s.

Nearly 13 years after its initial release, Plain Recordings issued Songs for a Blue Guitar on double 12" heavyweight vinyl for the first time in June 2009.

[4] A limited number of 500 copies pressed on heavyweight blue-colored vinyl were made available exclusively to Aural Exploits.