From Prefab Sprout's early-'80s singles up through their often brilliant but much maligned album The Gunman and Other Stories in 2001, Paddy McAloon has written some of the finest pop tunes you're likely to hear in your lifetime. Comparisons have been made with Cole Porter, Lennon/McCartney, Brian Wilson, Stephen Sondheim, Jimmy Webb, Elvis Costello, and many others, but he remains a truly original and gifted singer and songwriter. While Prefab Sprout could never be called prolific in terms of physical album releases, McAloon has continued to write and demo material throughout the band's 20-plus-year career.

From Langley Park to Memphis is the third studio album by English pop band Prefab Sprout. It was released by Kitchenware Records on 14 March 1988. It peaked at number 5 on the UK Albums Chart, the highest position for any studio album released by the band. The album featured guest appearances from Stevie Wonder and Pete Townshend. Five singles were released to promote the album: in order of release, "Cars and Girls", "The King of Rock 'n' Roll", "Hey Manhattan!", "Nightingales" and "The Golden Calf". "I Remember That" was later released as a single in 1993 to promote the greatest hits album A Life of Surprises: The Best of Prefab Sprout.

Even though he had been suffering from hearing and sight impairments, Prefab Sprout man Paddy McAloon actually picked up the pace with the release of Crimson/Red, an album that follows Let's Change the World with Music by four years, halving the eight-year wait after 2001's The Gunman and Other Stories. It's also interesting that songs like "Mysterious" (an appreciation of Bob Dylan) and "The Songs of Danny Galway" (a lush love letter to the work of Jimmy Webb) cover the same ground as Let's Change the World's numerous odes to the power of pop music, but that album was arguably "tricky," because with the Sprout, overly smart and overly ambitious are the delicious pratfalls fans still savor.

Protest Songs was recorded by Prefab Sprout in 1985 in the wake of the masterful Steve McQueen/Two Wheels Good, but shelved in favor of the subsequent From Langley Park to Memphis; it finally surfaced to little fanfare in 1989, appearing almost as mysteriously as it was abandoned four years earlier. It's a wonderful record, but perhaps too close in sound and spirit to Steve McQueen for comfort – From Langley Park, for all its flaws, is a much more adventurous effort, and with the benefit of hindsight, it seems reasonable to assume that Paddy McAloon wished not to stick with the tried-and-true but instead attempt something new and different, successful or not.

5 CDs in one box, packed with the best music for the street, the highway, the truck, the motorcycle and everyone who needs the perfect sound for freedom, vacation and enjoyable "being on the road" and it's a little dustier and with more like guitars. From tender to hard, from rock classics to country evergreens, from Los Angeles to Nashville, here comes handmade music from real musical icons from the best music decades.

After the seven-year gap between 1990's Jordan: The Comeback and 1997's Andromeda Heights, many Prefab Sprout fans were surprised by the comparatively brief four years between that album and 2001's The Gunman and Other Stories. The album holds other surprises for the longtime Prefab Sprout fan; for one thing, backing vocalist Wendy Smith is absent, having left the group after the birth of her first child, and for another, it's a Western-themed concept album. Actually, though, this last shouldn't be too surprising, as singer/songwriter Paddy McAloon has had a thing for the American West as far back as the 1984 single "Don't Sing," and has always shown a love of traditional country music, as on Prefab Sprout's 1985 cover of Jim Reeves' "He'll Have to Go."

Paddy McAloon had not yet found the key to the elegant compositions that made Prefab Sprout distinctive when it came time to record their debut, Swoon. He certainly tries hard to make his sophisticated contemporary pop sound distinctive, but the problem is that he does too many things at once – the lyrics are overstuffed, and the music has too many chord changes and weird juxtapositions, as he tries to put white-funk beats to carefully crafted melodies. A few moments work, such as "Couldn't Bear to Be Special," but Swoon is primarily of interest as a historical item, since it only suggests the promise the band later filled.