Music » Adult Contemporary Music

Release Date: 1994-05-10, Audio CD, Sony Wonder (Audio)

Release Date: 1998-10-06, Audio CD, Atlantic / Wea

The most complete collection ever from this Grammy. and Oscar. winner! Features 16 tracks spanning 1980-1994, including hard-to-find cuts like "A Chance For Heaven (Swimming Theme)" from 1984's XXIIIrd Olympiad album, plus three tracks newly remixed by the artist.

21 unforgettable Cher songs on one disc spotlighting Sonny & Cher along with her recent hits. slipcase. Warner/Geffen. 2003.

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: DIAMOND,NEIL
Title: JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL
Street Release Date: 07/07/1987
Domestic
Genre: VOCAL

Neil Diamond is one of a rare breed. As a songwriter, his music has been covered successfully by artists as diverse as the Monkees, Deep Purple, UB40, and Smash Mouth. But Diamond used that three-chord alchemy to build an unparalleled career as a performer as well. The 38 tracks on these two discs address those interlocking legacies in the most comprehensive manner yet, gathering his material from Bang! Records (including such pop staples as "Solitary Man," "Cherry, Cherry," "Kentucky Woman," "Red, Red Wine," and "I'm a Believer"), Universal (highlighted by "Sweet Caroline," Song Sung Blue," "Holly Holy," and "I Am ... I Said"), and Columbia for the first time. And if Diamond has veered toward the middle of the road on those latter recordings (such as "September Morn," "Heartlight," and the Streisand duet "You Don't Bring Me Flowers"), there remains a remarkable consistency throughout his work. As if to underscore the point, a number of mid-period hits (including "Shiloh," "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show," and "Soolaimon") are featured as live recordings from fall 2001. These performances show that the sweet roughness of his voice has only grown in power and drama; it's small wonder that Diamond remains one of the top live draws in the business. Even if it overlooks Diamond's unlikely late-'90s hit country album (Tennessee Moon), this set manages to be both concise and thorough, the best introduction yet to an American music legend. --Jerry McCulley

Those who had more than their fill of the likes of England Dan & John Ford Coley in the '70s had Bread to thank for the proliferation of such acts. Bread, led by David Gates, took all of the softer aspects of the post-'60s folk metamorphosis and none of the artistry. Songs like "Make It with You" and "Baby I'm A-Want You" were enormous hits, but nothing compared to the success of "If." Surveys would probably show that eight out of 10 weddings in the years after the song's debut had it squeezed somewhere in the ceremonial proceedings. Anthology doesn't really offer anything that some select surfing of adult easy listening stations doesn't already provide. It also shows that in the end, most of Bread's material, while a staple of the aural diet of many, ultimately has become stale as their namesake. --Steve Gdula

Known for a terrifying rendition of Otis Redding's hit "(Sittin' On The) Dock of the Bay" (among others), Michael Bolton tears up every classic soul tune he can get his hands on. Ray Charles' "Georgia on My Mind" and Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman" take on completely new meanings in the hands of this former hard rock singer. This 2 CD, 17-cut retrospective includes all the songs that catapulted him to mega-stardom and plenty of others that show him as just another sincere fool for love ("I Promise You" and "I Found Someone"). Just as Meatloaf turned up the juice on the histrionics of Bruce Springsteen, Bolton takes the soul singer out of the smoky nightclub and into the hockey arena for the whole world to hear. --Rob O'Connor

Digitally remastered and expanded edition of the historic, Grammy-winning 1988 debut album from the legendary super group of musical "brothers": George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne and Bob Dylan. Features two bonus tracks: 'Maxine' and 'Like A Ship'. Rhino. 2008.

Superstar crossover vocalist Sarah Brightman greets the new millennium with an even surer, bolder sense of her unique musical niche than that evident from 1999's Eden. Like Eden, La Luna is a concept album only in a vaguely free-associative sense. The selection of material here touches on images of the moon that reinforce its ambiguity as a force known to draw together "the lunatic, the lover, and the poet" (Brightman's photo shoots for the album do seem to suggest a sort of Titania-like figure out of a New Age Midsummer Night's Dream). And it's a stylistic as well as thematic voyage, coursing from such contemporary sounds as synth pop (on "This Love") through vintage jazz standards (Billie Holiday's atmospheric and haunting "Gloomy Sunday") to high opera for the title track (a version of the sublime "Song of the Moon" from Dvorák's fairy-tale opera Rusalka), and drawing elsewhere on the gorgeously sinuous melodies of Bach, Handel, and Rachmaninov--one song, "Figlio Perduto," even adapts the slow movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Throughout, producer Frank Peterson swathes Brightman's shiny small voice in luxuriant fabrics of sound. Detractors will lament the resulting sameness of tone--no matter what the style involved--but Brightman's focus on spinning an ethereal spell never gets eclipsed. This domestic release includes three tracks not available on the import version and has a special treat hidden in the final track as a bonus. --Thomas May