Texas - Cover Versions, Volume 2 (1997-2008)

Yesterday, I posted the first of two albums of cover versions by the band Texas. Here's the second and final album. You should read the write-up to that other album for general information. But, in short, you don't have to be a fan of Texas's original material to enjoy these albums. As you can see, the band covers the same kind of music that is generally featured in this blog, and lead vocalist Sharleen Spiteri has an excellent voice.

Speaking of Spiteri, she went solo for a few years, roughly from 2008 to 2012. Then the band got back together and has stayed together ever since. So there's a big chunk of songs here that are credited to Spiteri instead of Texas. But it basically sounds the same. Note that Spiteri released a solo album in 2010, "The Movie Songbook," that entirely consists of cover versions. I've deliberately avoided including any songs from that album so as to not cut into album sales. But I did include a couple of songs from it if they were significantly different versions.

Here's a list of the original artists for each song:

01 You're All I Need to Get By - Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
02 Parisian Pierrot - Noel Coward
03 Don't You Want Me - Human League
04 Surrender - Diana Ross
05 Take Me with U - Prince
06 Private Number - William Bell
07 Across the Universe - Beatles
08 Tainted Love - Gloria Jones / Soft Cell
09 Suspicious Minds - Elvis Presley
10 What Do I Get - Buzzcocks
11 Misty - Erroll Garner
12 Alice - Tom Waits
13 All These Things that I've Done - Killers
14 I Heard It through the Grapevine - Gladys Knight & the Pips / Marvin Gaye

It terms of sound quality, everything here sounds very good. I've maintained extra high sound quality standards for these two albums. That means some songs got cut. (I'm particularly bummed I couldn't find a good enough version of "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley.) Eight of the 14 songs here are officially unreleased. But that doesn't matter due to the high quality control.

I'm at a total loss as to when and where the song "All These Things that I've Done" is from. I'm placing it around 2008, since it's a Sharleen Spiteri solo version, and that's when her solo career began. But I very well could be wrong. If anyone knows better, please let me know.

Here's the usual song list:

01 You're All I Need to Get By (Texas)
02 Parisian Pierrot (Texas)
03 Don't You Want Me [Edit] (Texas)
04 Surrender (Texas)
05 Take Me with U (Texas)
06 Private Number (Texas & William Bell)
07 Across the Universe (Texas)
08 Tainted Love (Texas)
09 Suspicious Minds (Texas)
10 What Do I Get [Edit] (Texas)
11 Misty (Sharleen Spiteri)
12 Alice (Sharleen Spiteri & Jane Birkin)
13 All These Things that I've Done (Sharleen Spiteri)
14 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Sharleen Spiteri & Jamie Lidell)

This album is 51 minutes long.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15852803/Texs_1997-2008_CovrVersionsVol2_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is of Sharleen Spiteri in 2003. The photo is actually of her in an embrace with actor Ewan MacGregor, but I cropped him out of it. Once again, my apologies to the other band members for not featuring them on the cover.