Flip Your Wig

By 1985 Hüsker Dü was the best-selling band on SST Records.[3] The band had wanted to produce their previous album New Day Rising, but SST insisted on sending long-time label producer Spot.[4] With Flip Your Wig the band was finally allowed to self-produce.[3] Recording took place over several sessions in the band's hometown of Minneapolis[5] from March to June 1985, by far the longest the band had spent in the studio.[3] The cleaner production complemented the more melodic songs, still performed with heavily distorted guitars in a high-powered manner.[6]

Mould said, "There's more emphasis on the vocals. They're a little more out-front. The production is the main thing. Clearer vocals and less emphasis on guitar. The crazy solos... I think we're a little out of that now."[7]

Guitarist Bob Mould and drummer Grant Hart each wrote roughly half the songs,[6] which continued the band's trend toward power pop and away from the fast, noisy hardcore punk of their earliest material.[1]

"Makes No Sense at All" was released as a single,[5] with "Love Is All Around" (the theme song of the Mary Tyler Moore Show) on the b-side.[8][9] The a-side was the band's first song to achieve significant airplay on album-oriented rock radio.[10] and its video was the band's first.[5]

"The Baby Song" was a tribute to Grant Hart's newborn child. In 2010, The A.V. Club named it one of "24 songs that almost derail great albums".[11]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[2]
Chicago Tribune	[12]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[13]
Spin Alternative Record Guide	9/10[14]
The Village Voice	A−[15]

Flip Your Wig appeared via SST in September 1985. It débuted at No. 5 on the CMJ album charts and received more radio airplay and mainstream press attention than the band's earlier releases, including stories in Creem, Spin,[10] Rolling Stone.[16] Robert Christgau declared in The Village Voice that with the album's production the band had "never sounded so good",[15] and the album placed in the top ten of the magazine's critics' poll for 1985 along with New Day Rising.[10] Flip Your Wig became SST's best-selling album at the time of its release,[17] moving 50,000 copies in its first four months.[5]

By the time the album was released Hüsker Dü had signed a record deal with the major-label Warner Music Group,[18] who were keen to release the album themselves.[19] However, out of loyalty, and because of SST's appointment of new promotions manager Ray Farrell, the album was given to SST.[20]

Decades later, Bob Mould saw Flip Your Wig as "the best album Hüsker Dü ever did".[21] Ira Robbins and John Leland at Trouser Press describe the album as "Positively brilliant — fourteen unforgettable pop tunes played like armageddon were nigh" and rate "Makes No Sense at All" as "one of 1985's best 45s".[22] AllMusic's review says "Flip Your Wig would be a remarkable record on its own terms, but the fact that it followed New Day Rising by a matter of months and Zen Arcade by just over a year is simply astonishing."[23]

Liner notes adapted from the album sleeve.[24]

Hüsker Dü

• Bob Mould – guitar, bass, piano, lead and background vocals, percussion, producer
• Greg Norton – bass
• Grant Hart – drums, lead and background vocals, vibraphone, slide whistle, percussion, producer

Technical

• Steve Fjelstad – engineer
• Fake Name Communications – cover design[25]
• Bruce A. Christianson – front cover photography
• Daniel Corrigan – back cover and insert photography