The Only Ones is the debut studio album by English power pop band The Only Ones, released in 1978 by Columbia Records. It was produced by the Only Ones themselves, with the assistance of Robert Ash and was mixed at Basing St., Escape and CBS.
The album was re-released in Europe in 2009 on Sony Music Entertainment, featuring rare bonus content. The reissue was a CD which comprises 13-tracks. It includes the original album digitally remastered from the original 1/2" mix tapes; alongside three bonus tracks.
Trouser Press called it "the best of the three original albums" in which "Perrett's languid vocals and songs provide the character and focus, while the band's skills carry it off handsomely".[8] The album is still widely admired by British critics. In 1994, The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music named The Only Ones one of the 50 best punk albums of all-time. The compilers claimed that the Only Ones were "the closest thing the UK had to Johnny Thunders' Heartbreakers, a laconic, shamble of a band who were, at moments, touched by a creative greatness that made you get out of the glare".[9]
^"The Only Ones: The Only Ones". Mojo. p. 120. Perrett's tremulous, wounded vocal fitted intoxicatingly throughout with Perry's delicious soloing and dark, mesmerising melodies.
^Du Noyer, Paul (1998). Encyclopedia of Albums: 1,000 Best-Ever Albums. Bristol: Dempsey Parr. p. 163. ISBN1-84084-031-5. This is their most satisfying, most focused collection, unsullied by the drugs and disillusionment that characterised their demise
^Dimery, Robert, ed. (2005). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. London: Cassell. p. 401. Preferring flawed romance to fiery nihilism, Perrett peppered this 1978 debut with offerings of paranoid beauty
^"1000 albums to hear before you die – Artists beginning with O". The Guardian. 21 November 2007. Retrieved 3 November 2020. Frontman Peter Perrett was living the Pete Doherty lifestyle long before the Libertine, but found time to add his trademark narcotic drawl to John Perry's skyscraping fretwork in songs as stratospheric as Another Girl, Another Planet. If Babyshambles sounded like this, they'd fill stadiums.