Few observers expected that Whitney Houston's first big-screen role in 1992's The Bodyguard would generate a phenomenon. Not that the film itself was a phenomenon -- it was a healthy success, due not only to Houston, but to her co-star Kevin Costner's drawing power -- but the soundtrack's success was astonishing. The Bodyguard followed Houston's ...
By the time this was released in 1994, something unexpected happened. Sade's early work became classic and the later additions boasted even better vocals and songs that nicely improved on the theme. The timeless sound and class always exhibited makes Sade Adu and her band a no-brainer for an appealing compilation. Like Al Green's Greatest Hits, ...
Columbia's 1998 collection of Earth, Wind & Fire's Greatest Hits in many ways stands as the group's definitive compilation. Even though there have been more extensive overviews of the group's work, such as the triple-disc set The Eternal Dance, this is the first collection to contain all of the group's biggest hits on one disc. All but one ("Love ...
Though Anita Baker got some airplay out of The Songstress, that promising solo debut didn't bring her financial security. In fact, Baker was earning her living as a legal secretary in her native Detroit when she signed with Elektra in the mid-'80s. Elektra gave her a strong promotional push, and the equally superb Rapture became the megahit that ...
Pure Disco contains 12" mixes and remixes of classic dance and disco songs from the late '70s, including "I Love the Nightlife," "I Will Survive," "Celebration," "That's the Way (I Like It)," "Funkytown," "YMCA," and "Dancing Queen." Though there are a few original versions of these singles on the disc, most of it is comprised of remixes, which ...
When it was originally released in 1978, The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire, Vol. 1 was a succinct, ten-track collection of the group's best and biggest singles up to that point. There was one brand-new song, the excellent "September," which soon became a hit in its own right, plus the non-LP Beatles cover "Got to Get You Into My Life," which was ...
Since Pure Disco was a success, Mercury decided to assemble a sequel, Pure Funk. Like its predecessor, Pure Funk is a terrific 20-track collection of funk classics, from Rick James"Super Freak" to Parliament's "Flashlight." A couple of songs are marginally funk -- it's hard to call the kitsch-fest "Kung Fu Fighting" or Earth, Wind & Fire's sultry ...
Billy Ocean's Greatest Hits packs nearly all of the singer's charted singles that were on the Jive record label. Ocean scored an impressive run of feel-good Top 40 hits in the mid- to late '80s, including three number one singles, those being the classic post-disco jam "Caribbean Queen," the ballad "There'll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)," and ...
Released a decade into Boyz II Men's enormously successful career and a year after another best-of collection, Ballad Collection, Legacy: The Greatest Hits Collection puts all the quartet's hits on one disc. Songs like "Motownphilly" and "End of the Road" were phenomenons during their reign atop the Billboard charts, and many of the other songs ...
Roberta Flack was blessed with one of the loveliest, most soothing voices in the music industry. In the 1970s, she not only appealed to pop and R&B audiences, but also fit in with the era's more serious, sensitive singer/songwriters. She scored some of the decade's biggest hits with classics such as "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," "Killing ...
It's hard to believe, but prior to the 2003 release of The Definitive Collection, there wasn't a proper hits collection in Lionel Richie's catalog. A decade earlier, Motown dipped their toe in the water with the jumbled Back to Front, which tried desperately to camouflage its nature as a comp with three new songs, which, at 14 tracks, hurt the hit ...
'80s Pop Hits is a three-disc set from Sony with a heavy emphasis on ballads, many of which continue to be played on adult contemporary radio stations across the U.S. The relatively upbeat material -- like Wham!'s "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," Toto's "Rosanna," Luther Vandross' "Stop for Love," and Deniece Williams' "Let's Hear It for the Boy" -- ...
It's hard to believe that Ronnie Isley collaborated with Dr. Dre and the departed Tupac Shakur on some of the late 20th century's most hardcore hip-hop music. Isley, of the renowned group the Isley Brothers, has his roots firmly placed in '70s R&B and soul music. D'Angelo, Maxwell, and R. Kelly, among other bedroom-music artists, all owe a bit of ...
Greatest Hits is a good, basic sampler of the Manhattans' hits for Columbia Records, featuring such singles as "Kiss and Say Goodbye," "I Kinda Miss You," "It Feels So Good to Be Loved So Bad," "Am I Losing You," "Crazy" and "Shining Star." ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
The Very Best of Peabo Bryson is one of the best Bryson best-ofs that has been released in the last decade, containing 16 of the singer's best-known singles. The lowest performing track here, 1977's "I Can Make It Better," still managed to reach number 23 on the R&B chart, so that indicates that the set plays it straight, with no deep album cuts ...
Recording live at Los Angeles' Roxy club -- then a showcase for many of the hottest acts in pop -- was just the tonic that George Benson and his Breezin' band needed on this often jumping album. With unusually lively crowds (for a record-industry watering hole) shouting encouragement, the band gets deep into the four-on-the-floor funk and Benson ...
Anita Baker's My Everything is her first studio outing in a decade. Family life seems to have claimed most of that time, as the album's last cut, "Men in My Life," seems to indicate. Baker co-wrote seven of the album's nine songs (one is a reprise of the title track), authored the aforementioned tune, and assisted producer Barry J. Eastmond in the ...
The title is a bit of a misnomer, as you could count up on the fingers of both hands all the early hits that aren't on this 15-track collection. But if it's latter-day Marvin you're looking for -- from "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" through tracks like "Let's Get It On" and "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" -- this set will fill the bill ...
Baker has been making solid, if unspectacular, records for several years now, trying to recapture the grace of Rapture. Despite several good songs and uniformly strong vocals, Rhythm of Love doesn't have enough flair to win back a mass audience. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
Stephen Elliot's 1994 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert sparkled as it traced the journey of two drag queens, a transsexual, and their pink bus "Priscilla" across the Australian outback. The visuals alone were worth the price of admission, but, with songs leaping off the big screen and onto CD, the accompanying soundtrack album ...
I Want You, while it was a Top Ten smash for Marvin Gaye in 1976, is not as generally well-known as its predecessors for a number of reasons. First, it marked a sharp change in direction, leaving his trademark Motown soul for lush, funky, light disco. Secondly, its subject matter is as close to explicit as pop records got in 1976. Third, Gaye hadn ...
Pre-dating the voyeuristic tendencies of reality television by 20 years, Here, My Dear is the sound of divorce on record -- exposed in all of its tender-nerve glory for the world to consume. During the amazing success of I Want You and his stellar Live at the London Palladium album, Marvin Gaye was served with divorce papers from his then-wife ...
The debut solo release from the Ohio native, Private Line features a nice mixture of songs and spawned four chart singles. The vocal energy Gerald LeVert brings to his songs is revealed in each lyric. The first release was "Private Line." With a locomotive rhythm track and a churnin' horn arrangement, "Private Line" is complemented with a catchy ...
New York City native Luther Vandross did not generate any number one hits with his second effort for the Epic imprint. Nonetheless, he presents another solid album. The smooth crooner has demonstrated a keen ability to attractively arrange remakes with such beauty and suspense as he did with three of the four featured releases. On the vintage ...
This is the peak of George Benson's courtship of the mass market -- a superbly crafted and performed pop album with a large supporting cast -- and wouldn't you know that Quincy Jones, the master catalyst, is the producer. Q's regular team, including the prolific songwriter Rod Temperton and the brilliant engineer Bruce Swedien, is in control, and ...
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
![Pure Disco [Polygram]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/c8792690f0i_t.jpg)
![Greatest Hits [Jive]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/c4909305547_t.jpg)
!['80s Pop Hits [Sony]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/e91771eusx4_t.jpg)
![Greatest Hits [Sony Special Products]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/f95799zh2ls_t.jpg)
Portions of content provided by All Music Guide or All Movie Guide. © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide and All Movie Guide are registered Trademarks of All Media Guide, LLC.