Holding the Music in Your Hands ®
The Dream Academy / Religion, Revolution & Railways: The Complete Recordings CD
Religion, Revolution & Railways is a 7CD box set featuring ‘The Complete Recordings’ of The Dream Academy. SDE interview with Nick Laird-Clowes discussing this box is coming during this week.
After much speculation, the tracklisting of the 2CD+blu-ray 25th anniversary reissue of Air’s 1998 album Moon Safari – specifically the content of CD 2 – has been confirmed by the record label.
The second disc will feature the following tracks:
The first thing to make clear is that it is not the same as the second CD in the previously released 10th anniversary edition, although there is some overlap, namely the three BBC live tracks and the David Whitaker version of ‘Remember’. In terms of the other selections, the Air remix of Neneh Cherry’s Kootchi was previously featured on CD 3 of the Twentyears deluxe edition in 2016, as was the ‘La Femme D’Argent Mix’ of Crustation’s ‘Purple’. The demos appear to be previously unreleased and the Extended Version of ‘Kelly Watch The Stars’ has never been issued on CD before.
The other new info is that David Whitaker’s version of ‘Remember’ is also available in Dolby Atmos on the blu-ray as a bonus track. Also, the hi-res stereo version of the album on the blu-ray, along with that bonus track, is in super high resolution: 192 kHz / 24 bit.
Moon Safari will be reissued on 8 March 2024 via Rhino. This is available via the SDE shop should you choose to support SDE. Use this link or the button below, if you want to do that.
A 50th anniversary celebration of ABBA’s second album Waterloo will be released in April.
The formats follow the familiar pattern of a 2LP 45RPM half-speed mastered vinyl edition, a seven-inch box set with three coloured vinyl singles (‘Honey Honey’, ‘Waterloo’ and ‘Waterloo (Swedish Version)’) and then the same three singles available as individual seven-inch picture discs.
There is an additional physical product this time around, however; a special 10-inch single of ‘Waterloo’ that features alll four versions of the song: Swedish, English, German and French language versions. A picture disc version of the album is also available.
Waterloo will be reissued on 5 April 2024 via UMR/Polydor.
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Keane’s 2004 debut Hopes and Fears will be reissued for its 20th anniversary in May.
The album features three UK top 10 singles in ‘Somewhere Only We Know’, ‘Everybody’s Changing’ and ‘Bedshaped’ and was a massive success. It has since gone on to sell more than 2.7m copies in the UK alone.
Founding band member and songwriter Tim Rice-Oxley said: “When I think about these songs, I still picture us playing them in little rooms in pubs around the UK. I remember how exciting it was watching the crowds start to grow. Those songs opened the door to another dimension for us; everything that has happened in our lives since then was born out of that moment. It’s an incredible privilege for us that people are still listening after all this time.”
The reissue is available as a 3CD deluxe set which offers B-sides, rarities and a host of unreleased demos and an expanded 2LP coloured vinyl delivers the remastered album on LP 1 and B-sides and rarities on LP 2. There’s also a single ‘galaxy’ coloured vinyl LP which is album-only and a D2C box set that includes the 3CD, a seven-inch single and a whole load of ‘stuff’ (numbered commemorative ticket, Hopes And Fears notebook, postcards etc).
Hopes and Fears 20 will be released on 20 May 2024 via UMR/Island.
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David Bowie’s 1974 album Diamond Dogs will be reissued for its 50th anniversary as two different vinyl pressings.
The conceptual album features the single ‘Rebel Rebel’ and highlights include the ‘Sweet Thing / Candidate / Sweet Thing (Reprise)’ sequence on side one and ‘1984’ and ‘Big Brother’ on side two (Bowie had plans – subsequently scrapped – for a musical based on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four).
The album was notable for being produced by Bowie, who also handled lead guitar duties. Tony Visconti returned for string arrangements and to help mix the long-player.
Consistent with previous Bowie 50th anniversary celebrations, there’s two vinyl editions: a half-speed mastered black vinyl version and a picture disc LP with poster.
Diamond Dogs will be reissued on 24 May 2024, via Parlophone.
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Crowded House will release Gravity Stairs, their new studio album in May.
Produced by the band with Steven Schram, the 11-track long-player follows 2021’s Dreamers are Waiting and is the second with the current line-up of Neil Finn, Nick Seymour, Mitchell Froom and Neil’s sons Elroy and Liam Finn.
The title ‘Gravity Stairs’ was inspired by a heavy stone staircase near where Finn goes on holiday: “It’s a metaphor for getting a little older and becoming aware of your own mortality, your own physicality,” Finn explains. “Things are getting a little harder, and there’s more determination needed to get to the top, but there’s still the same compulsion to climb them.”
The album features the new single ‘Oh Hi’ and the cover art is, of course, a pastiche of The Beatles‘ Revolver. Signed prints come free with a well-priced CD+blue vinyl bundle on the band’s shop.
Gravity Stairs will be released on 31 May 2024, via BMG.
Official Crowded House Shop highlights
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What’s Love Got To Do With It was the 1993 Tina Turner soundtrack to the biographical film of the same name and it will be reissued across three physical editions, in April.
The album featured five new songs, including ‘I Don’t Wanna Fight’ (co-written by Lulu), along with old songs such as ‘Private Dancer’, a remixed version of ‘I Might Have Been Queen’ and Turner’s cover of The Trammps’ disco classic ‘Disco Inferno’.
Top of the range is a 4CD+DVD edition of What’s Love Got To Do With It that includes various remixes, edits, instrumental and acapella versions along with Tina’s live show from the Blockbuster Pavillion which is offered across two CDs and on DVD. The packaging looks similar to Turner’s previous deluxe editions and includes a poster and a 24-page booklet.
The 2CD version simply features the first two discs from the box, so you get all 16 of those edits/remixes from CD 2. A single vinyl LP edition is also available.
What’s Love Got To Do With It will be reissued on 26 April 2024 via Rhino.
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1. I Don’t Wanna Fight – 04:27
2. Let’s Stay Together – 04:48
3. What’s Love Got To Do With It – 08:08
4. Proud Mary – 09:55
5. Legs – 04:41
6. Better Be Good To Me – 10:13
Encore
7. Disco Inferno – 04:03
8. (Darlin’) You Know I Love You – 04:27
9. Why Must We Wait Until Tonight – 04:20
Pearl Jam have announced Dark Matter their 12th full length studio album.
The album has been produced by Andrew Watt and was recorded in 2023 in Shangri-La Studios in Malibu during a productive three week period.
Dark Matter’s artwork features light painting art by Alexandr Gnezdilov. The album cover art was crafted using a large self-made kaleidoscope. Each letter visible on the cover was individually captured and handwritten midair with a specially designed flashlight to create the pearlescent effect.
The 12-track album is available in a variety of formats, including coloured vinyl etc. but notable is a is CD+blu-ray combo that features an immersive Dolby Atmos Mix on the blu-ray element along with hi-res stereo audio (the Atmos Mix is by Nick Rives and Josh Evans).
Dark Matter is released on 19 April 2024 via EMI. This isn’t an SDE-exclusive but it is available via the SDE shop should you choose to support SDE. Use this link or the button below, if you want to do that.
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Garbage will reissue their 2005 album Bleed Like Me in April.
This was the last album issued before the band’s hiatus and features the UK top 10 hit ‘Why Do You Love Me’. The album has been remastered and is reissued across three formats: 2CD with a selection of B-sides, remixes and demos on the second disc, a 2LP red vinyl edition with 10 B-sides/extra tracks on LP 2 and then a silver single vinyl LP which features just the remastered album.
The 2CD and 2LP sets also features the none-album single ‘Tell Me Where It Hurts’ (from 2007) and its two B-sides, ‘Betcha’ and ‘All That Is Good In This Life’.
This album was never actually issued on vinyl back in 2005, so the single LP and 2LP editions are its official debut on the format.
Bleed Like Me is reissued on 5 April 2024 via BMG.
Garbage Shop highlights
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The Early Years 1966-69 is a new 5CD box set that spotlights the early era of Status Quo.
This collection features songs from the pre-Quo days, as the first iterations of the bands that developed into Status Quo found their feet – and their sound – as well the first two Status Quo albums.
CD 1 starts with remastered mono versions of Quo’s first two albums, Picturesque Matchstickable Messages from the Status Quo and Spare Parts, from 1968 and 1969 respectively, remastered in both mono, while the second disc offers the same selection in remastered stereo.
CD 3 is dubbed ‘Before Quo’ and boasts recordings from The Spectres, who then became Traffic Jam, including A-sides, B-sides and BBC sessions. The fourth disc delivers a generous selection of A-Sides, B-Sides, demos and outtakes before the fifth and final disc completes the story of this era with 18 further tracks from various BBC radio sessions.
The discs are presented in a clamshell box and come with a 40-page booklet with extensive sleevenotes and loads of images of memorabilia from this era, drawn from the band’s own archive.
The Early Years (1966-1969) will be released on 15 March 2024 via BMG.
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Kate Bush / The Dreaming Escapologist Edition Vinyl
Kate Bush follows up her ‘Baskerville Edition’ of Hounds of Love with another illustrated vinyl edition of one of her studio albums, this time 1982’s The Dreaming. Available to pre-order from the SDE shop.
Following last year’s Show reissue, The Cure will re-release their other 1993 live album, Paris, in March.
The album was recorded in October 1992 at Le Zénith de Paris, during the band’s Wish tour, and was released a year later, only a few weeks after Show, with the latter being the more poppier, commercial offering.
This 30th anniversary reissue of Paris has been newly remastered (by Robert Smith and Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios) and it features two previously unreleased live tracks ‘Shake Dog Shake’ (originally the opening track of 1984’s The Top and ‘Hot Hot Hot!!! (from 1987’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me). The band played 26 tracks on each of the three nights in Paris but even in expanded form this reissue offers just 14.
Paris is being reissued on 2LP black vinyl and on CD. It’s out on 22 March 2024 via Polydor/UMC.
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The release date of Peter Gabriel’s i/o box set has been pushed back. Originally scheduled for next month, it’s now gone back to 26 April (same day that the Pet Shop Boys album comes out).
Although it definitely looks good, this box simply gathers together all the formats that have been made available separately: 2CDs, four vinyl LPs and a blu-ray. It does include a casebound book with expanded sleeve notes and a poster, but apart from enjoying the object, it’s hard to get too excited. PG has shared some photos of the actual box (see above).
It’s still a great record though and you can read the SDE review here!
Thanks for all the positive feedback on the Wham! SDE-exclusive blu-rays and to everyone who has so far pre-ordered. They were a year in the making and obviously I’m thrilled to be able to deliver these exclusive products to the marketplace, especially an album as iconic as Make It Big!
I was always sad that ‘Careless Whisper’ wasn’t part of the Echoes From The Edge of Heaven campaign, so it’s fantastic (pun intended) to have both the album/12-inch version and the single version in Atmos on the Make It Big blu-ray. Including the Wexler Mix of ‘Careless Whisper’ would have been the icing on the cake, but sadly George did not have a high opinion of that version (as made clear in the recent Wham! Netflix documentary) so you can guess why it hasn’t made an appearance!
But putting that to one side, I’ve done my best to bring together all the appropriate bonus material including a smattering of rarities, and together the blu-rays come very close to offering a complete discography of 1983-1986. I’d love to do the same for George Michael’s solo albums. No promises of course, but if these do well that obviously increases the chances, so if you haven’t done so already, don’t forget to place your order via the SDE shop!
Deluxe editions of Wham!’s two studio albums – 1983’s Fantastic and 1984’s Make It Big – will be issued for the very first time via two SDE-exclusive blu-ray audio releases which feature 96/24 hi-res stereo mixes of the original recordings and Dolby Atmos spatial audio, along with a generous selection of bonus tracks in both Atmos and stereo. Both albums will also be reissued on limited edition coloured vinyl (and black vinyl) at the same time.
These albums need no introduction; Wham!’s 1983 debut Fantastic is of course home to four UK top 10 hit singles in ‘Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do?)’, ‘Young Guns (Go For It)’, ‘Bad Boys’ and ‘Club Tropicana’. A youthful George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley were the cool funk/soul boys who, for a time, sang about life on the dole, teenage rebellion, having fun and hitting the clubs. The album went to number one in the UK album charts and made stars of the duo.
Just ten months after the release of ‘Club Tropicana’ – and one legal dispute later – Wham! released ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ on Epic Records. This effervescent pop song is the lead track from Make It Big – an album that is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year – and is one of the most iconic singles released by any band during the 1980s. It reached number one in the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK singles charts (and virtually everywhere else). The next single ‘Careless Whisper’ (credited as a George Michael solo single in the UK, but co-written with Ridgeley) repeated this feat and even on release felt like it had reserved a spot in the history books as an all-time classic single. Wham! had a third consecutive number one in the UK with ‘Freedom’ and a trio of chart-topping singles from Make It Big in America when ‘Everything She Wants’ reached the summit in the USA. As is well documented, the non-album ‘Last Christmas’ should have been the group’s fourth number one in the UK in 1984 but they had to make do with the song peaking at number two (due to ‘Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas’). In the streaming era, ‘Last Christmas’ now tops the UK single chart apparently with ease, on an almost annual basis.
Fantastic highlights the drive and energy of Ridgeley and the fast emerging songwriting talent of Michael, which was all too apparent when the quality and sophistication of Make It Big was plain for all to see, in 1984. Wham! went stratospheric and the spark was only extinguished by choice when, in 1986, George called time on the band that, in the words of Andrew Ridgeley, “was never going to grow up”.
Together, the SDE-exclusive blu-rays of Fantastic and Make It Big tell virtually the entire story of Wham! via the two albums, A-sides, B-sides and rarities. The records have never sounded better and are presented in high resolution and immersive audio; here’s your one opportunity to own the Atmos Mixes – created by original engineer Chris Porter – of the albums and associated bonus tracks as a limited edition physical product!
The blu-ray of Fantastic features the longer version of the album originally issued on CD and cassette with three extra instrumental remixes: ‘A Ray of Sunshine’, ‘Love Machine’ and ‘Nothing Looks the Same in the Light’. Additionally, there are four extra tracks in Dolby Atmos including classic B-side ‘Blue (Armed with Love)’, the UK 12-inch of ‘Young Guns (Go For It)’ and a handful of single versions. On top of that, there are ten further bonus tracks in stereo, including instrumentals, and more remixes. In total, there’s 25 different songs/versions, 16 of which are available in both Atmos and stereo.
Make It Big features the 8-track album in both Atmos and 96/24 stereo and then a further 11 tracks in Dolby Atmos (and stereo) including the 12-inch remixes of ‘Freedom’, ‘Everything She Wants’ and ‘Last Christmas’. There are also Atmos Mixes of the single version of ‘Careless Whisper’ and the alternate single version of ‘Freedom’.
Encouraged by Andrew Ridgeley, George Michael Entertainment and Sony to ‘finish’ the Wham! story with this SDE-exclusive Make It Big blu-ray, we have included the two singles that were released afterwards. This means that the UK chart-toppers from 1985 and 1986 respectively – ‘I’m Your Man’ and ‘The Edge of Heaven’ – both feature in Dolby Atmos (and stereo), as do both ‘Battlestations’ and ‘Where Did Your Heart Go?’
As if that wasn’t enough, there are 10 further bonus tracks in stereo, including the rare 4.45 ‘Pudding Mix Edit’ of ‘Last Christmas’ which has never been officially issued on CD and, from the 12-inch of ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’, ‘A Ray of Sunshine (specially recorded for ‘The Tube’)’ – another track that has never been issued on CD, outside of Japan. All the remixes of ‘I’m Your Man’ feature on this disc, including the alternate 12-inch mix from the US-only mini-album Music From The Edge of Heaven (this version has never been released in the UK) and ‘Blue (Recorded Live in China)’ which was first issued on the 1985 reissue of ‘Last Christmas’. ‘Wham! Rap ’86’ from ‘The Edge of Heaven’ single closes the circle and brings to an end this celebration of Wham! 1983-1986.
Fantastic and Make It Big are numbers 19 and 20 in the ongoing SDE Surround Series of blu-ray audios with Atmos Mixes and both will ship with the free, collectible SDE slipcase. This acclaimed series has delivered some classic 80s albums over the last two years including ABC’s The Lexicon of Love and Tears For Fears The Hurting (both are now out-of-print).
Here’s the now traditional reminder as to why this product is highly recommended:
If you don’t have an Atmos set-up just yet, the Atmos Mixes will ‘fold down’ and still sound great in a 5.1 system. If/when you upgrade, you’ll get the full Atmos experience!
The SDE-exclusive Blu-ray Audios of Fantastic and Make It Big will be available to pre-order for 14 days only and will close on Thursday 22 February 2024. Availability after that cannot be guaranteed, so secure your copy today by pre-ordering at the SDE shop, either directly via this link or using the special SDE shop buy button below. We ship worldwide, no longer have any extra charges to the EU (for orders under €150).
Limited edition one-time pressings of Fantastic and Make It Big on red and white vinyl respectively are also available and can be ordered with the blu-rays via the SDE shop. There’s plenty of cost-saving bundles available depending on which products you want to buy.
The Fantastic and Make It Big blu-rays initiative is a collaboration between SDE and Sony Music and will be released on 26 April 2024 (was 22 March).
A blu-ray audio is a blu-ray disc with no video content. It is region-free and compatible with ALL blu-ray players. Any stereo content can be played via two speakers or a soundbar, in the normal way, but to enjoy the surround sound/spatial audio element such as 5.1 mixes and Dolby Atmos Mixes you will need to connect to an appropriate amplifier/receiver with speaker set-up or a Atmos/5.1 certified soundbar
The SDE Surround Series so far is:
#1 Tears For Fears: The Tipping Point
#2 xPropaganda: The Heart Is Strange
#3 Gilbert O’Sullivan: Driven
#4 Shakespears Sister: Hormonally Yours
#5 Brian Eno: FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE
#6 Orbital: Optical Delusion
#6.5 Various Arists: Concert For George
#7 Ten Years After: A Space In Time
#8 Bob Dylan: Time Out Of Mind (2022 Remix)
#9 Tears For Fears: The Hurting
#10 Mike Oldfield: Tubular Bells
#11 Suede
#12 ABC: The Lexicon of Love
#13 Duran Duran: Danse Macabre
#14 Trevor Horn: Echoes – Ancient and Modern
#15 Soft Cell: Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret
#16 Def Leppard: Diamond Star Halos
#17 Paul Young: No Parlez
#18 Mark Knopfler: One Deep River
With Now Yearbook ’90 only just released a week ago, Now That’s What I Call Music are wasting no time in announcing its triple-disc’d companion, Now Yearbook ’90 – Extra.
This 3CD set features 58 more “essential singles” and has a pretty strong CD 1 which features George Michael (‘Freedom! 90’), Duran Duran (‘Serious’), Tears For Fears (‘Advice From The Young At Heart’), TFF’s ‘bestie’ at the time Oleta Adams with ‘Rhythm of Life’ (penned by Roland Orzabal and Nicky Holland) and contributions from Paul Young, Tina Turner, Robert Palmer (with UB40), Propaganda, Roxette, Eurythmics and more.
The second CD starts off vaguely ‘baggy’/indie with The Farm, The Soup Dragons, The Beloved, The Cure, Aztec Camera and Primal Scream before going ‘dance’ (SNAP, LL Cool J, MC Tunes & 808 State) and then ending with a bit of rawk (Billy Idol, Poison, Cher).
CD 3 is the pop disc and it’s a surprise to recall that as late as 1990 Kylie Minogue was still releasing singles like ‘Tears On My Pillow’ and Jason Donovan was still releasing singles. Bros, New Kids On The Block, Paula Abdul feature here and the second half is a mish-mash of styles and artists including Betty Boo, Cliff Richard, Dusty Springfield, Deborah Harry, Big Fun and Liza Minelli.
Now Yearbook ’90 – Extra will be released on 15 March 2024.
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Manic Street Preachers will reissue their 2004 album Lifeblood in April for its 20th anniversary.
Described by Nicky Wire as “our most estranged album of all” the band’s seventh studio long-player features the singles ‘For The Love Of Richard Nixon’ and ‘Empty Souls’ and will be available on four physical formats.
A 3CD deluxe bookset features a newly remastered version of the album on the first disc (overseen by James Dean Bradfield) and the B-sides and extra tracks (including Japan-only ‘Antarctic’ and ‘The Soulmates’) collected on the second CD. There is also a new ‘extended eighties mix’ of 1985 remixed by Steven Wilson and a Gwenno Mix of the same song. The final disc in this set offers unreleased demos, alternate Tony Visconti mixes and live tracks.
The 2LP vinyl edition is album-only but is available in two variants: black or indie-exclusive red vinyl. The single CD edition appends those two remixes of ‘1985’ to the remastered album.
Lifeblood is reissued on 12 April 2024 via Sony Music.
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Deep Purple’s 1972 album Machine Head will be reissued as a 3CD+Blu-ray+LP super deluxe edition next month.
The English rock band’s sixth studio album was famously due to be recorded at Montreux Casino before it burnt to the ground. The band ended up setting up the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio in the nearby Grand Hotel which was closed for the Winter, Overlook-style. These events were depicted in the classic Smoke on the Water, which starts side two of the vinyl version of this album.
Machine Head has been reissued many times, so what new content does this super deluxe edition offer? Well, Dweezil Zappa has remixed the record in stereo and in Dolby Atmos. The new stereo mix features on the coloured vinyl LP (“opaque white with hints of purple”) which is included in this super deluxe and on the first CD in the five-disc set, which is also home to a 2024 remaster (two versions of the album on one CD). The new stereo and Atmos remixes also include ‘Never Before’ B-side, ‘When A Blind Man Cries’.
The two CDs both include live performances. The first, recorded on 9 March 1972, at the Paris Theatre in London, captures the group on their Machine Head Tour. The second is previously unreleased; it was recorded in April 1971 at the Montreux Casino in Switzerland (yes, the same one that burned down eight months later). This is an “audience recording” which covers songs the band recorded prior to Machine Head, including ‘Child In Time’ (from 1969’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra), ‘Speed King’ (from 1970’s Deep Purple in Rock), and ‘Strange Kind Of Woman’ (from 1971’s Fireball ).
The blu-ray audio features the new Atmos Mix, and the original 1974 US Quad Mix and three tracks in 5.1 Surround Sound. The new stereo mix is not listed amongst the content (go figure) and why the whole album, rather than just three tracks, isn’t included in 5.1 (from the old DVD-Audio) is a mystery.
The super deluxe edition includes a 60-page book with new sleeve notes and the usual archive and rare photos.
Machine Head will be released on 29 March 2024 via Universal ex USA and Warners in America.
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In 2004, Sean Rowley was booked onto Jonathan Ross’ Radio 2 show to promote the first Guilty Pleasures compilation. What had begun as a regular slot on his own BBC London show, playing the kind of music that had actually been big in the UK singles charts at a time when the rock history books and documentaries would have you believe Britain was entirely consumed by punk – Alessi’s feather-light soft rock hit ‘Oh Lori’, Andrew Gold’s ‘Never Let Her Slip Away’, ‘Howzat’, the solitary UK hit by Australian pop band Sherbert – had mushroomed into a club night and now a series of major-label compilations. Knowing that Ross was away that week, and his slot would be filled by comedian Mark Lamarr, Rowley took former Specials frontman Terry Hall with him: Lamar was a huge Specials fan, Hall – who had apparently spent his time in The Specials quietly nursing a love of the oeuvres of Pilto – was one of the resident DJs at the Guilty Pleasures club night. It did not work out quite as planned. Lamar was aghast at the music on the compilation and more aghast still at Hall’s involvement. “This is just rubbish,” he protested, fading out an old Carol Bayer Sager track selected by Hall after less than a minute. The interview turned combative. “I felt like I was in the Sex Pistols, being attacked by Bill Grundy,” Hall later deadpanned. “Just because I like The Captain And Tennille.”
If nothing else, it’s a story that tells you a lot about how big a phenomenon Guilty Pleasures became in the ‘noughties’. You might have reasonably expected it to strike a chord with a certain demographic. if you had been a kid in the mid-to-late 70s – too young for the music press, but not too young for Radio One and Top Of The Pops – these songs were buried somewhere deep in your brain. They might have subsequently been written out of history, but they had been played a lot at the time: if you relied on the radio and telly for your musical diet, you would have heard Marshall Hain’s now-forgotten 1978 Top 3 hit ‘Dancing In The City’ a lot more than the oeuvres of The Damned or The Clash. Hearing it again a spark of acknowledgement among listeners of a certain age – oh my God, this! I remember this! – and an accompanying burst of nostalgia: few things have the ability to transport you back to the past quite like music you haven’t heard for decades, that’s never previously been revived or reassessed.
You might possibly have expected said demographic to include a few people who’d gone on to become famous musicians: George Michael requested Rowley play a Guilty Pleasures DJ set at his 2007 Wembley Arena show. You might even have wondered if it might attract a few people like the late Terry Hall who’d been old enough to participate in punk, but had a secret yen for the music it was supposed to be implacably opposed to. But what was startling was how widely the idea took off: Rowley obviously hadn’t invented the phrase, he certainly succeeded in reanimating it in reference to rock and pop. The club night was featured on the front page of The Guardian. Barbra Streisand was impelled to change the name of her 2005 album Guilty Pleasures to Guilty Too in the UK. There was a Guilty Pleasures TV special, a Guilty Pleasures live show – featuring Suggs from Madness singing John Paul Young’s ‘Love Is In The Air’ – and a sneaking suspicion that the success of the compilation paved the way for new bands who sounded like the artists on it to have hits was hard to avoid, hence the triple platinum sales of The Feeling’s debut album Twelve Stops And Home.
But along the way, the term became uncoupled from the specific era on which the first Guilty Pleasures compilation alighted. “Guilty pleasures” ultimately just became shorthand for pop music of virtually any stripe. By the time that X Factor started running a guilty pleasures week – which bafflingly involved contestants performing Chaka Khan’s ‘Ain’t Nobody’, and, wait for it, Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ – it became apparent that the term had become so detached from its original concept as to become essentially meaningless.
Perhaps understandably, the 4CD set that celebrates Guilty Pleasures’ 20th birthday attempts to bring things back to basics. Everything on it hails from the 70s. It offers a mix of songs that appeared on the initial compilations, ‘Oh Lori’, ‘Howzat’ and ‘Dancing In The City’ among them, songs that probably should have been – Liverpool Express’s ‘You Are My Love’ is prime Guilty Pleasures territory, a fabulous piece of shimmering, dreamy soft pop, a huge hit during the heatwave-struck summer of 1976 – and what you might call Guilty Pleasures deep cuts: songs that are too obscure to cause the old flash of nostalgia-laden recognition, but which broadly fit in with the sonic aesthetics of the music that does.
Some of the latter category really is obscure – British duo Denne And Gold, a track from a flop solo album by former Three Dog Night vocalist Cory Wells. What’s been dug up here is often intriguing (‘Umbopo’ is a peculiar bit of early 70s pop recorded by a pre-fame 10cc under the name Doctor Father; Watchersign was Pratt & McLean’s improbable attempt to follow up their big hit, the theme tune from Happy Days, with some astrology-obsessed disco-inflected soft rock) and frequently fantastic. For all its nostalgic appeal, the music Guilty Pleasures focussed on was seldom kitsch, just unfashionable – you’d have a hard time applying the so-bad-it’s-good label to songs as well-written as Captain And Tennille’s ‘Love Will Keep Us Together’ or Ace’s ‘How Long’ or Helen Reddy’s fabulously creepy ‘Angie Baby’ – and so it proves here. Stephen Bishop’s 1976 album track ‘Little Italy’ is impeccably turned-out soft rock blessed with a guest vocal from Chaka Khan. Browning Bryant’s ‘Liverpool Fool’ is just fantastic – the work of a former child star, written by Allen Toussaint, with a supremely lithe backing courtesy of The Meters. And, frankly, the charts in 2024 could use a song as idiosyncratic and melodically rich as Lynsey de Paul’s ‘Sugar Me’.
It walks a line between familiarity and crate-digging exploration, and it’s all richly enjoyable – shameless, blameless fun, as the club’s tagline used to have it – but it’s perhaps worth pausing to think what a mind-boggling state of affairs a fairly lavish 4CD box set that features the work of Alessi, Sherbert, Jigsaw and the Starland Vocal Band would once have seemed. That it doesn’t in 2024 is at least partly down to the fact that we currently live in a world that Guilty Pleasures predicted. It presaged a number of things, not least the rise in standing of yacht rock, as it came to be known, the elevation of which from the bargain bin status to the stuff of serious discussion may be America’s answer to the Guilty Pleasures phenomenon, although the other candidate would be the 2014 soundtrack to Disney’s Guardians Of The Galaxy, which majored in disposable 70s US pop, from Blue Swede’s ‘Hooked On A Feeling’ to Rupert Holmes’ deathless ‘Escape (The Piña Colada Song)’. Both have had an impact on the tracklisting of this box set, which features yacht rock favourites Seals And Croft and Nicolette Larson’s super-smooth reading of Neil Young’s ‘Lotta Love’, as well as a brace of songs familiar from Guardians Of The Galaxy: Looking Glass’s ‘Brandy You’re A Fine Girl’, Silver’s ‘Wham-Bam-Shang-A-Lang’, Elvin Bishop’s ‘Fooled Around And Fell In Love’.
And you only have to look at the improbable old tracks that have gone viral thanks to TikTok’s teenage users to realise that we’re in an era where old-fashioned notions of canonical cool and gatekeeping – the very things Guilty Pleasures was reacting against – no longer apply. Recent years have seen the streaming figures for everything from Edison Lighthouse’s ‘Love Goes (Where My Rosemary Goes)’ to Matthew Wilder’s jaunty ‘Break My Stride’ go through the roof after becoming memes on the video-sharing platform. Meanwhile, the makers of wildly popular teen drama Euphoria thought nothing of throwing songs by Gerry Rafferty and Billy Swan – both of whom appear on this box set – in amongst the big 21st Century pop stars and ultra-hip names on its soundtrack: Labrinth, Arca, Drake, Rosalia, James Blake, Megan Thee Stallion. So the Guilty Pleasures box set arrives in a world where the notion of a guilty pleasure no longer really exists – which makes it a historical artefact twice over.
Guilty Pleasures was reviewed for SDE by Alexis Petridis. It is out now via Demon Records.
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The Pineapple Thief’s 14th album was recorded over the last couple of years and is available across a number of formats. The 2CD+Blu-ray+DVD deluxe (in 52-page hardcover book) not only features a Y Aqui Estamos – a bonus album of alternate versions – but also Dolby Atmos and 5.1 mixes of both albums! If you can live without the book, the same content (both albums in Atmos, 5.1 and stereo) is available on a standalone blu-ray.
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The Scottish band’s 2004 debut is reissued as this limited black and orange marbled vinyl pressing, for the record’s 20th anniversary. Comes with an embossed sleeve and a download card.
This time a 15th anniversary reissue as the Brighton-based British Sea Power re-release their third album. The expanded 2CD version of Do You Like Rock Music features live sessions and B-sides. The deluxe 2LP version includes the same audio but one LP is orange vinyl and the other is a picture disc!
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10th anniversary reissue of Eminem’s eighth studio album features 11 bonus tracks including six instrumentals. Available as a 2CD set and as a 4LP vinyl package (same tracks on both).
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