Once Upon a Time in the Top Spot: The Sisters of Mercy, “More”

24 years ago today, The Sisters of Mercy started a five-week run at the top of the Billboard Modern Rock chart with “More,” confirming that the three years that had passed since their previous album, 1987’s Floodland, hadn’t done anything to diminish their popularity.

Andrew Eldritch, the driving force of The Sisters of Mercy, had successfully worked with longtime Meatloaf collaborator Jim Steinman on Floodland, so it wasn’t terribly surprising to see Steinman’s name turn up in the credits of the first single from the band’s eventual follow-up album, Vision Thing. As it turned out, “More” was the only song to which Steinman contributed (he co-wrote and co-produced the track with Eldritch), but, man, talk about a song that makes an impact…

By the time Eldritch began work on Vision Thing he was – neither for the first nor the last time – effectively the only member of The Sisters of Mercy, but that didn’t last for long: the band’s lineup soon included guitarist Andreas Bruhn, Tony James of Generation X and Sigue Sigue Sputnik fame, and Tim Bricheno, late of All About Eve. “More” was as epic an introduction to the album as you could hope for, with Eldritch growling his way through the opening lines, “Some people get by with a little understanding / Some people get by with a whole lot more / I don’t know why you gotta be so undemanding / One thing I know / I want more.”

Clearly, listeners wanted “More,” given its five weeks atop the Modern rock chart, but it proved to be the only single from Vision Thing that had that level of success: although the follow-up single, “Doctor Jeep,” hit the UK Top 40 (albeit only just barely, topping out at #37), and “When You Don’t See Me” was a minor hit in Germany, that was about the extent of it. Even more disappointingly, we haven’t seen another studio album from the Sisters since…but, hey, at least we’ve got “More.”