<P> Living Years is the second album by Mike + The Mechanics, released in 1988 . The album reached number 13 on the Billboard 200 and number 2 on the UK Albums Chart . </P> <P> Mike Rutherford began writing songs for the album in September 1987, shortly after the conclusion of Genesis's Invisible Touch Tour . However, he found himself immediately stricken with writer's block, a circumstance he attributes to stress over the complications with his wife's current pregnancy, which nearly ended in the death of the child . The baby (Rutherford's third) was safely delivered in November, and Rutherford said that the relief made him feel "like a new man". In January he entered an extremely prolific songwriting period, and by the end of the month he had what he and producer / co-writer Christopher Neil felt was a good album's worth of material . In light of this, Neil wanted to move up the recording sessions, which had been scheduled for April . Rutherford vetoed the idea, however, and with his burst of inspiration still running, most of the songs that eventually appeared on the album were written over the next two months . </P> <P> The first single taken off the album, "Nobody's Perfect," peaked at number 63 on the Billboard Hot 100 . </P> <P> The next single off the album, "The Living Years", was a worldwide number one hit, reaching that mark on the Billboard Hot 100 chart the week ending 25 March 1989 . The song also reached number one on the Australian ARIA singles chart the week ending 13 May 1989 . In the United Kingdom, it spent three weeks at number 2 in January and February 1989, behind Marc Almond and Gene Pitney's reworking of "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart ." </P>

Mike and the mechanics the living years album