Michael Jackson had recorded solo prior to the release of Off the Wall in 1979, but this was his breakthrough, the album that established him as an artist of astonishing talent and a bright star in his own right. This was a visionary album, a record that found a way to break disco wide open into a new world where the beat was undeniable, but not ...
Songs in the Key of Life was Stevie Wonder's longest, most ambitious collection of songs, a two-LP (plus accompanying EP) set that -- just as the title promised -- touched on nearly every issue under the sun, and did it all with ambitious (even for him), wide-ranging arrangements and some of the best performances of Wonder's career. The opening ...
Two years after the 10th anniversary of Dirty Dancing, RCA released Dirty Dancing: The Collector's Edition, which combined the two soundtrack albums in one deluxe packaging. There is no new music or remastering -- just straight reissues of the soundtracks themselves. The packaging is a simulated-leather double-pack, containing a booklet that ...
Prince designed Purple Rain as the project that would make him a superstar, and, surprisingly, that is exactly what happened. Simultaneously more focused and ambitious than any of his previous records, Purple Rain finds Prince consolidating his funk and R&B roots while moving boldly into pop, rock, and heavy metal with nine superbly crafted songs. ...
After spending a few years in limbo after scoring her first R&B hits "Dance With Me, Henry" and "Good Rocking Daddy," Etta James returned to the spotlight in 1960 with her first Chess release, At Last. James made both the R&B and pop charts with the album's title cut, "All I Could Do Was Cry," and "Trust in Me." What makes At Last a great album is ...
The first single-disc Jackson 5 collection to take full advantage of the compact-disc medium, The Ultimate Collection is certainly the ultimate for any but the most hardcore fans. Ranging from 1969's "I Want You Back" to 1975's "I Am Love, Pts. 1-2," these 21 tracks include each of the group's hits, among them "ABC," "The Love You Save," "I'll Be ...
The Very Best of Otis Redding wasn't the first Otis Redding compilation but it is the best of the single-disc collections, distilling the high points across his career (up thru the posthumous hits "(Sitting' On) The Dock of the Bay" and the heartbreaking "I've Got Dreams to Remember") in 16 tracks, every one a musical milestone and a soul music ...
Some 46 years after his first pop hit, and 39 years after his death, comes only the second attempt at a comprehensive Sam Cooke collection. Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964 eclipses RCA's early-'80s The Man and His Music, going it better in running time but losing some important recordings -- "That's Heaven to Me" and "Soothe Me," arguably one of ...
The Jackson 5 installment of MCA's 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection is a terrific, concise collection of the group's 11 biggest hits. There may be some smaller hits missing, but all the big tunes -- "I Want You Back," "ABC," "The Love You Save," "I'll Be There," "Never Can Say Goodbye," "Dancing Machine" -- are here, along with two ...
Michael Jackson's edition of 20th Century Masters -- The Millennium Collection concentrates entirely on his solo recordings from the early '70s, including such blockbusters as "Got to Be There," "Rockin' Robin," and "Ben." This doesn't contain every single one of his early solo hits, but it does contain the great majority of them, which means it ...
Riding high on the wild success of the Jackson 5, Motown ringleader Berry Gordy assembled every single notable production team member and songwriter in his arsenal to contribute to the solo debut of the J5's boy wonder, Michael. By the time Got to Be There was released, much had changed in the Jackson dynamic, none the least Michael's voice. But ...
When you're putting together a 21-song collection of a major artist who's had more than 40 Top 40 hits, inevitably there's going to be a lot of good stuff left out. Stevie Wonder's long and varied career (not over when this anthology appeared) really needs more than one disc to even adequately summarize the highlights. But this single-disc comp ...
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 ...
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 ...
It took quite a while for a definitive Barry White compilation to hit the market, but All-Time Greatest Hits -- part of Mercury's Funk Essentials series -- finally filled the bill in 1995. Boasting a full 20 tracks from White's heyday of 1973-1978, more than half of which made the R&B Top Ten, All-Time Greatest Hits is easily the most generous ...
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 ...
Like The Bodyguard and Waiting to Exhale before it, The Preacher's Wife is a soundtrack that also functions as a Whitney Houston album, but that's where the similarity ends. Where The Bodyguard was adult contemporary pop at its finest and Waiting to Exhale was a virtual encyclopedia of mid-'90s mainstream black pop, The Preacher's Wife is an ...
Dirty Dancing was a late-'80s phenomenon that will not die. The movie was a smash and the soundtrack was too, spawning several hit singles as well as causing a lot of overdue interest in some great oldies. The Legacy edition of Dirty Dancing is a remastered, resequenced, and redesigned revisitation of the soundtrack and the music from the film. In ...
With Dirty Mind, Prince had established a wild fusion of funk, rock, new wave, and soul that signaled he was an original, maverick talent, but it failed to win him a large audience. After delivering the sound-alike album, Controversy, Prince revamped his sound and delivered the double album 1999. Where his earlier albums had been a fusion of ...
Genius Loves Company is the last studio album Ray Charles completed before his death in June 2004. Prior to this, the last studio album he released was Strong Love Affair in 1996, which was a stab at modern pop, filled with new songs and given an adult contemporary sheen. It was not one of his most distinctive efforts, even when judged against his ...
When Stevie Wonder applied his tremendous songwriting talents to the unsettled social morass that was the early '70s, he produced one of his greatest, most important works, a rich panoply of songs addressing drugs, spirituality, political ethics, the unnecessary perils of urban life, and what looked to be the failure of the '60s dream -- all set ...
Drawn almost entirely from her Argo/Chess recordings of the '60s (although there are some cuts from the early '70s), Love Songs is a fine selection of romantic music from one of the greatest blues singers of her generation. There are hits here, highlighted by "At Last," but mood overrules chart position, so these 14 songs wind up setting a ...
Controversy continues in the same vein of new wave-tinged funk on Dirty Mind, emphasizing Prince's fascination with synthesizers and synthesizing disparate pop music genres. It is also more ambitious than its predecessor, attempting to tackle social protest ("Controversy," "Ronnie, Talk to Russia," "Annie Christian") along with sex songs ("Jack U ...
With the exception of Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, one would be hard pressed to name a Motown act who went through as many creative shifts as the Temptations. While Wonder's and Gaye's changes of direction were a product of their own creative rebellion against Berry Gordy's brilliant but often formulaic vision, the Temptations seemed to be the ...
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