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...Famous Last Words... by  Released7 October 1982RecordedNovember 1981 – mid-1982StudioUnicorn, 
The Backyard, 
Rumbo Recorders, 
Bill Schnee's Studios,    Length47:35Peter Henderson, Russel Pope, Supertramp chronology
(1980)...Famous Last Words...
(1982)
(1985)

...Famous Last Words... is the seventh  by English  band  and was released in October 1982. It was the studio follow-up to 1979's  and the last album with vocalist/keyboardist/guitarist , who left the group to pursue a solo career. Thus, it was the final album to be released by the classic lineup of the band (Hodgson, Davies, Helliwell, Thomson, and Siebenberg).

The album reached number 5 on the Billboard Pop Albums Charts in its third week on the chart dated November 27, 1982 and was certified Gold for sales in excess of 500,000 copies there. It also peaked at number 6 in the UK where it was certified Gold for 100,000 copies sold.

Background and recording

Though  and Roger Hodgson had long been writing their songs separately, they had always conceived the theme and overlying direction for each album together. ...Famous Last Words... became the exception to this rule: having been living in different parts of California in the months leading up to the recording, they each conceived their own vision for the album. Hodgson wanted to do another pop album in the vein of , while Davies had envisioned a heavy  album with a 10-minute song called "" as its centerpiece.

According to , "In the end, they both kind of changed their formats and their picture of what they thought this album should be. It became a diluted version of what it started out to be. It was really neither here nor there." In particular, the band decided to leave out "Brother Where You Bound", since it was too "heavy" to fit alongside Hodgson's pop compositions. Supertramp used "Brother Where You Bound" for their next album,  (1985), though it had by that point evolved from 10 minutes to 16 and a half through the addition of some new sections.

As usual, the songs are all officially credited as being written by Davies/Hodgson. However, the sleeve notes color-code the songs' lyrics by individual author. The lead vocalist on each song is the same as its writer: "Crazy", "", "Know Who You Are", "C'est le bon", and "Don't Leave Me Now" were written by Hodgson, and "Put on Your Old Brown Shoes", "Bonnie", "", and "Waiting So Long" were written by Davies.

The album was mainly recorded and mixed at Hodgson's home, Unicorn Studios in , California, as he did not want to leave his wife, his then two-year-old daughter Heidi, and newborn son Andrew behind. Davies wound up recording his vocal and keyboard parts at his home studio, The Backyard Studios, in , California. Other overdubs were at Bill Schnee Recording Studios in Los Angeles.

At the time of the album's release, many interpreted the title and cover art as thinly-veiled hints that Supertramp was breaking up. In a 2015 interview, Hodgson confirmed that he and Davies decided on the title because "we weren't doing [a record] again". He said that he regrets recording the album, calling it "a last-ditch attempt to try and make things happen" after the life had gone out of the band. Conversely,  said in 1986: "We wanted a phrase that bore some relationship with what we were doing but was enigmatic at the same time. We always like to have enigmatic titles like  ... This last LP we thought was going to be real quick. We thought we were going to rehearse it and record it real quick and it ended up taking longer than any other so we had to eat our words again. For the past three or four LPs we've been saying, 'Let's be well prepared.' So the title sprung out of that as well. I can't remember who first thought of it. The graphic design came directly from the title."

Reception Professional ratingsReview scoresSourceRatingUnfavourable8/10

A contemporary review in  savaged the album for its nondescript nature, concluding "this stuff is so soddenly bland already that the  folks are going to have their work cut out for them". , in a retrospective review, found the album overly tailored towards commercial success, claiming that the group in general and Roger Hodgson in particular were too fixated on producing more hits, and that as a result "romantically inclined poetry and love song fluff replaces the lyrical keenness that Supertramp had produced in the past, and the instrumental proficiency that they once mastered has vanished."

Track listing

All songs credited to  and . Listed below are the respective writers, also lead singers of their songs.

Side one No.TitleWriter(s)Length1."Crazy"4:442."Put On Your Old Brown Shoes"4:223.""Hodgson4:244."Bonnie"Davies5:375."Know Who You Are"Hodgson5:00 Side two No.TitleWriter(s)Length6.""Davies5:157."C'est le bon"Hodgson5:328."Waiting So Long"Davies6:359."Don't Leave Me Now"Hodgson6:24