Saint Etienne are an English band from Greater London, formed in 1990. The band consists of Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs. Stanley and Wiggs were childhood friends and former music journalists, who once had a fanzine called Caff which had developed into a record label by 1989. They originally planned that Saint Etienne would use a variety of different lead singers, and their 1991 debut album, Foxbase Alpha – influenced by sources such as club culture, 1960s pop, and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s Dazzle Ships – features several vocalists, including Moira Lambert and Donna Savage. However, after working with Sarah Cracknell on “Nothing Can Stop Us”, they decided to make her the permanent vocalist, and Cracknell has written or co-written many of the band’s songs. Commonly associated with the indie dance scene of the 1990s, their music blends club culture with 1960s pop and other disparate influences. The band’s name comes from the French football club AS Saint-Étienne.
Their debut album, Foxbase Alpha, was released to critical acclaim in 1991, featuring their most enduring hits “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” and “Nothing Can Stop Us”. It was followed by So Tough (1993), with the number twelve single “You’re in a Bad Way”, and the techno folk experiment of Tiger Bay (1994); both albums reached the top-ten. Their early period was rounded out by the gold-certified compilation Too Young to Die: Singles 1990–1995, producing the band’s highest-charting single, “He’s on the Phone” with Étienne Daho. In 2000, the band crossed genres by working with trance producer and DJ Paul van Dyk, resulting in the single “Tell Me Why (The Riddle)”, with vocals by Cracknell.The band embraced indie pop on Good Humour (1998), with its lead single “Sylvie” reaching number twelve.
By the new millennium, Saint Etienne had pivoted towards ambient music on Sound of Water (2000), while Finisterre (2002) and Tales from Turnpike House (2005) distilled these stylistic diversions and a return to their early influences. Finisterre was released in 2002. A follow-up DVD by photographer and film maker Paul Kelly was released in 4 July 2005. In November 2004, they released their first US compilation of greatest hits, called Travel Edition 1990-2005. 13 June 2005 saw the release of the band’s album Tales from Turnpike House. It was preceded by a single for the track “Side Streets”. A second single, “A Good Thing”, was released in the United Kingdom in October 2005. Early editions of the album were accompanied by a six-track sampler CD for a planned album of children’s songs entitled Up the Wooden Hills.
After years floating around various record labels, the band returned to its original label Heavenly for their 2009 career retrospective, London Conversations: The Best of Saint Etienne. The album contained two singles, a reworked “Burnt Out Car” and a new track, the Richard X-produced “Method of Modern Love”. The album also contained as a third “new” track, a remix by Richard X of the previously vinyl-only “This is Tomorrow”. In May 2012, following the January release of the single “Tonight”, the band released their eighth studio album, Words and Music by Saint Etienne. Saint Etienne’s ninth studio album, Home Counties, was released in June 2017.
Their tenth album, I’ve Been Trying to Tell You, was released on 10 September 2021. According to Pete Wiggs, the album was a lockdown project for the trio during the COVID-19 pandemic, prior to which they were working on a different set of tracks. The band incorporated samples for the first time in nearly two decades on I’ve Been Trying to Tell You (2021), which became their highest-charting album since 1994 at number fourteen. In September 2021, he confirmed the group planned to revisit the material for a possible 2022 release. Their eleventh album, The Night, was released in December 2024.
