Review:

on 2011-04-22 CharlesMartel Said:

Now here was a band which epitomised the best that pop had to offer in the eighties. Not the only thing which separated them from many of the eighties pop acts was that they had, by the standards of the time, reasonable hair. No, unlike many of their contemporaries, the music was crisp and taut, and the songs were catchy and aimed squarely at the thinking end of the pop market. This was not designed by some record company boss with the sole intention of making another fast buck. This was pop created by people who liked pop and wanted to make pop records. One result of that is that, because this is genuine, it far exceeds the synthetic output of the manufactured artists of the same era for whom making records was merely vicarious money-grubbing on the part of record executives.

It would almost be inevitable that I should end up purchasing this album. The Eurythmics had been, to some extent, part of my life through the eighties. They were not principal players, very much bit parts, but they were always there. Over the course of the decade they built up a solid collection of good numbers, many of them released as hit singles. For a band who would never set my world on fire, alone and unaided, a compilation of the likes of this was always going to be welcome. However, and I have railed against this trend on other reviews, I do not understand why there are fewer tracks on the North American issue - it just seems a pointless and self-defeating waste of time in my view.

The Eurythmics mixed synthesisers with more traditional instruments - you can hear harmonicas, saxophones and a whole horn section on this album - and melded them into a combination which always sounded good if never actually stunning. This was music you could dance to; it was music you could enjoy; it was music which muso-snobs really struggled to find anything negative to say about it (and for that alone it is worth every penny you ever paid for it).

Dave Stewart showed himself to be an excellent producer, someone who could bring out the best in any outfit while Annie Lennox combined the essential qualities of a good front - power and range in the vocals with a sense of the outrageous. Almost single-handedly, Lennox recreated the androgynous popstar of the early seventies, albeit shorn of the more camp excesses of the glam era when it first surfaced. Sometimes controversial, but never dull, the Eurythmics were around for much of the eighties and into the early nineties and you cannot say that about many pop acts of any era. Their eventual break-up, unlike so many of their contemporaries, was due to the mutual feeling that the band had run its course. No tantrums, no bitchiness - just a recognition that a musical journey had been completed.

And this compilation represents the best of the Eurythmics. Like a lot of bands, I could not stomach getting a whole set of their albums, but a good solid compilation was always a necessity, and this is, for that reason, a very necessary album. Like all compilations, some people will say that their particular favourite has been left off, while another track should never have been included. True, you can say that about this, but why bother. This is a great collection of eighties pop, so live with it.
Rating: 7/10