YMMV / The Fall (Band)

• Archive Panic: They have released 32 studio albums since 1978. Don't rely on compilations for help either, most of them are rather poorly compiled or only focus on a certain point in the band's career.
  • One possible good compilation is 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong.
  • What many fans and critics claim is the band's definitive release, the 2005 Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004 box set of radio sessions, weighs in at 6 CDs and seven hours.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The 2005 BBC documentary The Wonderful and Frightening World of Mark E. Smith features the band's then-current members praising Smith and barely containing their excitement at being members of The Fall. About 18 months after the documentary premiered, most of these same musicians were part of the lineup that quit the band the middle of a summer tour by skipping town and abandoning Smith and keyboardist Elena Poulou at a hotel.
  • The 2017 album New Facts Emerge, contained a song called "Victoria Train Station Massacre", in which "massacre" is used as a hyperbolic expression of Smith's dislike of the reconstruction of Manchester Victoria railway station. After the album was finalised, but about two months before it was released, twenty-two people were killed in a terrorist attack on an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena, right next door to the station, which itself suffered minor damage.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Athlete Cured" is heavily based around a riff taken from "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight": Supposedly the guitarist at the time had been playing the riff as a warm-up, and Mark E. Smith, having never heard the song before, quickly wrote down his own lyrics to go with it.
  • According to one bio of the band, when Brix came up with the bass riff that became the foundation of "Elves", everyone in the band but her immediately recognized it as "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by The Stooges.
  • "Greenway" is based around the same music as "Gameboy" by Greek comedy metal group Anorimoi, with a completely different vocal melody and new, English lyrics: This time it was blatant enough that they credited a member of Anorimoi as a co-writer, so it can also be viewed as a Cover Version / Song Parody.
  • Similarly to the above, "Stout Man" uses the same music as "Cock In My Pocket" by The Stooges - in this case, it's credited entirely to the members of The Stooges despite the lyrics being entirely different.

---