Crazy Rhythms
album by The Feelies
Crazy Rhythms is the debut studio album by American rock band the Feelies. It was released in the United Kingdom on February 29, 1980, and in the United States in April 1980, through British record label Stiff. Although it was not commercially successful initially, it has remained critically lauded in the decades since its release. Its fusion of post-punk and jangle pop was influential on the forthcoming alternative rock genre, with R.E.M., among others, citing the album as an influence.
In September 2009 the album was performed live in its entirety as part of the All Tomorrow's Parties-curated Don't Look Back series.
Background
On the album, band member Glenn Mercer has said "The sound we were after was a reaction against the punk scene [...] Being a little older, we felt it had all been done before. We wanted the guitars to be cleaner, and we started experimenting with a lot of percussion."
Release history
The first release on CD was in Germany and the United States in 1986. A&M Records released the album on CD in 1990 with a bonus track, a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black". The track was recorded in 1990 without Fier or DeNunzio.
Bar/None Records reissued Crazy Rhythms on September 8, 2009, while Domino Records reissued the album outside of the U.S. and Canada.
The public source identifies “Crazy Rhythms” as album by The Feelies. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Crazy, Rhythms and album.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q611323. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980, 2009, 1986 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “Crazy Rhythms” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.