Head Music: Трудности и Эксперименты Suede

Head Music is the fourth album by English alternative rock band Suede, released by Nude Records in May 1999. Produced and mixed by Steve Osborne, Head Music features a more electronic sound, which was a new approach for the band. The recording of Head Music was plagued with difficulties such as singer Brett Anderson's addiction to crack, and keyboardist Neil Codling's struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome. The album still went to number 1 on the UK Albums Chart, however, making it the band's third and final chart topping album. Overall, the album received generally favourable reviews from critics.

After the release of the B sides compilation Sci Fi Lullabies, Suede decided to put themselves out of the limelight for over a year. Neil Codling spent most of the year in bed due to his illness and at the same time Anderson's drug abuse was becoming a cause for concern. Anderson began to associate himself with people outside the band's social circles, whom the band, especially Mat Osman, seemed to dislike. "More than anything there started to be a whole load of people he was associating with who I just couldn't stand. They had nothing to do with the band, nothing to do with anything but drugs. They were drug buddies." Suede decided to move on from Ed Buller as their producer. After demoing 15 songs with three different producers, wanting to go in a more produced, electronic sounding direction, the group chose Steve Osborne to produce the album. Osborne had previously worked with the band Happy Mondays. According to Anderson, Head Music was Suede's most experimental album, and Osborne's role played into the group's experimentation, "Steve was responsible for a hell of a lot of this album's sound. We chose him first of all because he did this fucking brilliant job on 'Savoir Faire'  It just sounded really exciting and unusual." Anderson was addicted to the drug for two and a half years, but stopped in late 1999 when somebody very close to him became ill. He has been clean since. instead they got Arthur Baker to do a version, however they disliked it. Osborne eventually relented, but was not so flexible when it came Codling's next offering. "Elephant Man", which is the only song on a Suede album not written or co written by Anderson. It was recorded, mixed and engineered by Bruce Lampcov. Codling contributed a greater amount of material to Head Music than Coming Up, receiving writing credits on six songs. Recording took six months but was extended by a break mid way for more writing, finishing up more than two months over schedule.

More groove oriented than previous Suede albums, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic said that, due to Osborne's production, Head Music adds "some vague elements of electronic and dance music to Suede's signature sound, but these primarily manifest themselves in the form of gurgling analog synths and canned, old school drum machines. Essentially, they're just window dressing, since the songs themselves are extensions of the glam flash of Coming Up."

As a joke, the group originally started to leak the album's title to the press one letter at a time. But two days after releasing the second letter, bassist Mat Osman announced the album's title and explained where the idea of releasing the title one letter at a time come from: "Saul [Galpern], head of Nude was hassling for a title, and Brett said, 'I'll tell you one letter at a time until you can guess it." The artwork, which features Anderson's girlfriend Sam, and Neil Codling, was art directed by Peter Saville and designed by Howard Wakefield and Paul Hetherington. Anderson told Saville "I wanted two people joined at the head, sort of listening to each other's heads. He showed me some photos and we eventually got the cover we released."

The band began promoting the album around February 1999 with the announcement of six fanclub shows the band would be playing end of March. Three UK shows in Glasgow, Manchester, London; and three Scandinavia shows in Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen. The band took part in a live webcast of tracks from the final mixing session direct from their studio on 1 March. Fans were invited to take part in a web chat, view exclusive footage from the studio and listen to the new songs at Suede's official website. On 22 March, the band played their first live show since the 1997 Reading Festival at the first of six fanclub shows at The Garage in Glasgow. Mat Osman said the band had about five songs to choose for the first single, including "Savoir Faire" and "She's in Fashion". Released 12 April, it earned the band their second highest charting single at number five in the UK. Continuing the run of five consecutive top ten singles from Coming Up. There was a lot of hype surrounding the release of Head Music, with numerous TV appearances including, CD:UK, The O Zone, Top of the Pops, The Pepsi Chart Show and TFI Friday. Uncut featured Suede in an 18 page special in May 1999 chronicling the band's ten year history, with the tagline: "Brett Anderson on a decade of decadence and debauchery." On 2 May, the day before the UK album release date, the band played a gig at Virgin's flagship Megastore on London's Oxford Street. The band played at 11pm and signed copies of the album for fans at midnight. Virgin spent around £10,000 on the new store facias. Commercially the album was a moderate success, being the band's third album to chart at no. 1 in the UK. Moreover, it slid quickly down the charts, exiting the Top 20 three weeks after release. In May 1999 the British Phonographic Industry certified the album as gold. The album was released in the US on Columbia Records 8 June. Head Music has sold about 26,000 copies in the US as of 2008 according to Nielsen SoundScan.