Eurythmics - Greatest Hits

 

I love this story about Annie Lennox.   I mean, we can put this down to a clueless producer who sends a form letter out to millions of artists, but really, how can anyone involved in the music industry not know of Annie Lennox?  Or at least twig to her name?   

She fronted one of the quintessential 80s bands.  During their career they had 7 top 10 albums and 23 top 40 hits in the UK.  Sweet Dreams, There Must Be An Angel, Who’s That Girl, Thorn In My Side, Would I Like To You.  The list of good songs, literally, goes on and on.  This is another Greatest Hits album doing exactly what it says on the tin.  It has to be in the running for one of the most essential greatest hits albums needed for any collection. 

 

This is great. 

Twin Peaks - Soundtrack

 

Remember the days of waiting a week to watch a TV show?  Also, do you remember the drama that happened when you missed an episode and you had to put out the call to see if anyone you knew taped (yes, taped) the key episode?  What happens if that show was as weird and out there as Twin Peaks (these are compliments btw)?  Back in the 90s I missed one or two episodes of Twin Peaks and therefore I could never follow it again.  It turns out that it was my loss until I re-watched it years later. 

 

Listening to this soundtrack on a rainy autumn morning was perfect.  It is moody, brooding, a bit sinister.  Un-nerving.  It fits the mood of the show really well and holds its own as an album. 

Blackbox - Dreamland

When I typed “Black Box” into Spotify, this artist wasn’t the first that came up in the results.  Nor the second.  It was the third album.  That seemed quite strange to me.  A number one album that has largely been forgotten.  I guess it is relatively anonymous, but it does have Ride on Time which is a cool bit of early 90s nostalgia.  Overall, this is a really good dance album.

Hothouse Flowers - Home

 

In music, as in so many other areas of life, timing is everything.  At the end of the 80s Australia was in thrall to U2 and Rattle and Hum.  I’m not pointing fingers here; I was in this boat too.  But by 1991 U2 hadn’t released anything new for a few years, so the public was clambering for another Irish band.  Hothouse Flowers filled that gap nicely. 

I really loved Home when it was released.  I must have played this album a thousand times.  The song they’ll be remembered for is, no doubt, their cover of I Can See Clearly Now.  It is one of those rare covers that improves on the original. 

 

My favourite, however, is Sweet Marie.  A song of such aching heartbreak that you can’t help but feel moved by it. The protagonist has received a “Dear John” letter and he moves through the emotions of grief, longing and ultimately the feeling of release and acceptance.  Finally he wants his ex-partner to find peace.  I had never heard a song quite like it before. 

The rest of the album is also pretty great.  It was their only number 1 album anywhere in the world (it got to number 5 in the UK).  They definitely have faded from the public consciousness, but there’ll always be a place in my heart for this album. 

Billy Joel - The Ultimate Collection

It looks like “The Ultimate Collection” was a package of his greatest hits, a live disc and his latest album (Storm Front).  He must have been on tour at the time?  I’m not sure.  Whatever was the reason for this release, it feels like it’s a good value compilation. 

Billy Joel.  Ok, so he’s the Piano Man.  But he’s also a bit of a rocker, he’s a bit of a soul man.  He’s quite an old school musician who can really turn his hand to anything.  He goes from catchy pop We Didn’t Start the Fire (catchier than an airborne pathogen … too soon?) to the character study of Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, to the Motown influenced Tell Her About It, to more straight ahead rock (Only the Good Die Young).  He’s got a lot of good songs.   

But he’s also a bit naff.  Billy Joel seems to be one of those artists that was a staple of the radio when I was growing up.  It feels like the Ultimate Collection lives up to the title.  It’s probably all the Billy Joel you’ll need in your life. 

 

Janet Jackson - Rhythm Nation 1814

 

Imagine being Michael Jackson’s sister and releasing an album.  It’d want to be pretty good wouldn’t it?  If Janet Jackson felt any pressure, it doesn’t show.  This is a great album that shows lots of confidence.  It has lots of great singles and while is in similar musical territory to her famous brother, she is treading her own path.  It feels like on this album she does have something to prove and it showed that there was more than one sibling in the family that should be taken seriously as a musician.

Elton John - The Very Best Of...

 

“He was Elton John once you know?”   Do you use that expression?  It’s become part of my vernacular.  It was coined in the 90s when EJ’s stock was at an all-time low.  You have to remember two things.  In the 90s EJ’s best years were behind him and I was also a young man with a terribly snobby attitude to music.  You would hear one of his songs on the radio and think … “you know, he actually had quite a few decent songs”.  So, it was a grudging acknowledgement that he had been a “pretty decent” artist “back in the day”. 

 

This collection does what it says on the tin.  It collects the very best of Elton John.  And that is a very fine thing indeed. 

1990

 Links to reviews from number 1 albums in 1990

Madonna - The Immaculate Collection

The Three Tenors 

INXS - X 

John Farnham - Chain Reaction 

Jimmy Barnes - Two Fires 

Van Morrison - The Best Of 

Gloria Estefan - Cuts Both Ways 

Pretty Woman Soundtrack

The Angels - Beyond Salvation

Madonna - I'm Breathless

Paula Abdul - Forever Your Girl

Michael Bolton 

Milli Vanilli

Sinead O'Connor 

Midnight Oil 

The 12th Man 

Aerosmith

The B-52s 

Jive Bunny 

Madonna - The Immaculate Collection

 

Could this be the best “best of” album ever?  It certainly should be part of any conversation.  Any artist that has the confidence to leave 4 top 5 hits off their greatest hits is pretty confident (Angel (no.5), True Blue (no.3), Who’s that girl (No. 1 no less) and Causing a Commotion No2)).  Let’s face it, most other artists would base whole careers around these off cuts.  But Madonna doesn’t need to even do that.  Is there any point in reviewing this album?  Just look at the track list. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immaculate_Collection#Track_listing

 

How to sum up the album?  It takes her from her simple pop beginnings to more complex, but no less exciting, pop masterpieces.  In an earlier review, I said that part of Madonna’s genius is to put 3 great songs on each album.  Here she combined them all on this one collection and it’s just great from start to finish.   A perennial favourite. 

The Three Tenors

 

We’ve come so far in such a short period of time.  Earlier in the year we had the most vacuous and hollow album to ever reach number 1 (Milli Vanilli) and now we get the three greatest singers on the planet.

 

This feels like the biggest anomaly in the whole list so far to be honest.  It obviously got to number 1 because of the Soccer World Cup where the Three Tenors performed but it’s nice to see some undisputed quality in this list. 

INXS - X

 

Numbers don’t always tell the whole story, do they?  The album that INXS will be remembered for (Kick) didn’t get to number 1 in Australia.  It got to number 2 twice (in 1987 and again in 2014).  It got to number 3 in the US and number 9 in the UK.  Sadly, this was the last number 1 album that INXS had (at least while MH was alive). 

 

But on the other hand, sometimes numbers do tell the story.  4 of the top 5 INXS songs on Spotify come from Kick and it has sold 20 million copies worldwide whereas X has only sold half this amount.         

 

X has always felt a bit like Kick part 2 to me, and it hasn’t aged particularly well.  It’s not without its merits, but it has the hallmarks of a band trying to give the public what they think they want rather than a band following their muse or naturally evolving.  It feels like they’re actually trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle thing that made Kick so great.  That said, Suicide Blonde and Disappear are still both great tracks.  But if you’re looking for a INXS fix, you’ll probably put on Kick and not X.

John Farnham - Chain Reaction

 

Is there any reason to mess with a proven formula?  Another artist who needs no introduction.  Whispering Jack is the second highest selling album in Australian history (after Bat Out of Hell) so he knows what works and doesn’t veer too far off the beaten path.  Mum friendly contemporary pop.  John Farnham feels like music that was designed to feature in Mother’s Day promotions.  But not any of the mothers that I know… they’re all super cool and are into Punk and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Regurgitator.  Bands like that.  He feels like music for my mum.  He certainly feels like a “safe choice”. 

 

What changed on this album is that it was the first album in his career where he wrote most of the songs on it.  (on previous albums he didn’t pick up a pen).  Are the songs more personal for that?  I’d say, yes, they are.  Are they better?  That’s hard to say.  There’s definitely a perception that a proper musician is one who writes their own songs. 

 

But writing and singing are two separate and important skills.  Frank Sinatra isn’t known for being a song writer for instance.  But where does that leave a good instrumentalist? (in this case voice).  John Farnham certainly has a good voice.  He picks material that suits his voice.  And that has proven to be a winning formula. 

Jimmy Barnes - Two Fires

 

Jimmy Barnes needs no introduction.  He’s Australian Rock Royalty.  On this album he writes songs with Rick Nowels (who has written songs with Lana Del Rey, Adele, Stevie Nicks, Belinda Carlisle, Madonna, etc etc etc.) and also with Desmond Child (you name them he’s written with them… Bon Jovi, Alice Cooper, Kiss etc) and Diane Warren (nine number-one songs and 32 top 10 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.)

 

So, do you think he was looking for hits? No need to answer that. When you work with those song writers that’s definitely what you’re aiming for.  Was it successful?  On balance I’d have to say no.  This album was always going to be successful in Australia, but it never even got a second glance in the US market (when you hire the above-mentioned songwriters, that’s the market you’re going for).  

 

How about the album itself?  It sounds like you’d expect.  A bit of pub-rock, but a bit more polished.  I guess that’s its biggest weakness.  I think the main appeal with Jimmy Barnes is his rawness.  That expression of unfiltered emotion.  Calling in the hired guns resulted in him losing his rough edges rather than enhancing his uniqueness

Van Morrison - The Best Of

 

The only explanation I can think of for this being number 1 is that previously no one had ever owned a Van Morrison album and they put all his decent songs on one disc.  Voila!  A winning formula.  None of his previous albums had troubled the top 10 and none did after this.  I think people probably had enough Van Morrison by owning this one album.  But to be fair, that’s true of most greatest hits albums.   

Gloria Estefan - Cuts Both Ways

 

This artist was such a surprise to find on the list.  Neither embarrassing, nor cool.  Not really mainstream.  Not underground.  She feels like quite an anomaly.  Certainly not someone who really made a mark on the public consciousness.  Neither someone of their time, nor timeless.  It feels quite weird.    

 

The album itself?  It’s a mix of up-tempo dance songs with a Latin spin (no surprises there) and fairly vanilla ballads.  All in all, it’s a pretty inoffensive listen.  But my main question is this – “who had thought of Gloria Estefan in 30 years?”   

Pretty Woman - Soundtrack

 

It’s pretty easy to see why this album made it to number 1.  It sort of feels like the 90s equivalent of a playlist.  The big hits were Go West (King of Wishful Thinking) and Roxette (It Must Have Been Love).  There really isn’t much to say about this album.  Some Film sound tracks are works of art in themselves (I’m thinking about the Pulp Fiction soundtrack by Tarantino and the Blade Runner Soundtrack) , but mostly they are a cash grab. This feels more like it fits in the second category.  I can see that people might put it on for a bit of early 90s nostalgia, but it’s no great work of art.  

The Angels - Beyond Salvation

 

I think maybe I’m too young to appreciate the Angels.  Not that my children would agree with any word of that statement.  Aussie Pub Rock was never really my thing.  It was a bit too one dimensional.  And its heyday was in the 70s and 80s.  This album feels a bit like the last gasp of pub-rock and it was the Angels only number 1 album in Australia.  Strangely not one of the songs from this album is in their Spotify Top 5 and the only song I know by title is “Dogs are Talking”.  I doubt it is considered the best Angels album by their fans.

Madonna - I'm Breathless

 

You could call this album “Madonna’s Jazzy period” if you wanted to.   It is the soundtrack to the film Dick Tracey and I’m sure the jazz sound is to fit in with the time period of the film (I’ve never seen it).  I’m also sure that being linked to a film helped this album get to number 1.  Although, did Madonna really need any help?  I’ve said this before, but part of Madonna’s genius is that she puts about 3-4 great songs on every album.  This one has Vogue, Hanky Panky and Sooner or Later which are all super catchy and at least one of them (Vogue) ranks up there with her best songs.  Having said that, I also feel that the skip button on people’s CD players got a bit of a workout while listening to this album, as aside from the singles there’s a bit of filler on the album.

Paula Abdul - Forever Your Girl

 

It’s easy to understand why this album made it to number 1 as it has 4 (four) pretty good singles on it.  Ok, I’m probably under selling that.  The title track, Cold Hearted, Straight Up and Opposites Attract all went to Number 1 in the US – and while only the latter made it to the top spot in Australia they all were reasonable sized hits.  The album itself is a pretty decent turn of the decade pop/dance album. It feels like this was Paula Abdul’s moment.  I know that she’s spent the last few years as a judge on American Idol, but this album didn’t really make much of an impact on the public consciousness.  Certainly not like the next artist to be reviewed.  But that’s for next time.