Skylarking is XTC's eighth studio album, released on October 27, 1986. Considered by many to be their finest album, Skylarking is a "life-in-a-day" semi-concept album which displayed songwriting and arranging heavily influenced by The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Kinks. The title of the album was inspired by Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem To a Skylark and many of the songs expand on the pastoral themes of their 1983 album, Mummer, most notably "Summer's Cauldron" and "Season Cycle".