16 Lovers Lane was the sixth album by The Go-Betweens. Legendary music critic Robert Christgau called it "the straightest and catchiest bunch of love songs they've ever produced".
In October 2010, 16 Lovers Lane was listed at No. 12 in the book, 100 Best Australian Albums. The authors described the album as being "the band's high-water mark and Forster and McLennan knew they'd nailed it" and that the songs were "their most direct, accessible and heartfelt ever", with "Forster, particularly, having learnt a new restraint. Gone was the bravado and archness that had informed much of his earlier work and in its place was an open-ness and honesty.
Based around songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, The Go-Betweens were perhaps the quintessential cult band of the '80s: they came from an exotic locale (Brisbane, Australia), moved to London in a sustained bid to make a career out of music, released album after album of music seemingly tailor-made for the radio in spite of their having little use for contemporary Top 40 musical/lyrical formulas, and earned considerable critical praise and a small but fervent international fan base. Although the Go-Betweens were absent throughout the '90s before re-forming in the new millennium, both of the band's songwriters embarked on respectable solo careers in the interim and, while rarely reaching the heights the Go-Betweens scaled, they still managed to uphold the group's legacy.