Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Duffy - Rain on Your Parade - Non-Album Tracks (2006)

Duffy has had a very strange musical career. She had a huge year in 2008. Her debut album "Rockferry" was the best selling album in Britain that year. But her next album, "Endlessly" in 2010, was a critical and commercial disappointment, and she hasn't released another album since then, apparently due to a sexual trauma in the early 2010s that totally derailed her career.

Personally, I really like the "Rockferry" album, but I think "Endlessly" is best forgotten. However, it turns out she has a de facto second album of all original material that's much, much better. Like Oasis with their first couple of albums, she blew lots of very good songs on B-sides that few people listened to. If one puts together all the "Rockferry" related B-sides, there's exactly enough songs for an album that's very much in the "Rockferry" style, and is nearly as good. This is that album.

The first song was a significant hit for her. It, plus the next three songs, were released as bonus tracks to a deluxe version of "Rockferry." All the other songs are B-sides, except for "Enough Love" and "Smoke without Fire," which were released first on movie soundtracks. 

In my opinion, "Endlessly" was a mistake, with terrible production that tried to make her sound like all the other generic pop crap on the radio, overwhelming the soulful singing that makes her special. It's much better to consider this her real second album. I think it is impressive that she wrote or co-wrote all the songs. Hopefully someday she'll fully reconnect with her musical mojo and put out more music like this and "Rockferry."

01 Rain on Your Parade (Duffy)
02 Fool for You (Duffy)
03 Stop (Duffy)
04 Breaking My Own Heart (Duffy)
05 Oh Boy (Duffy)
06 Save It for Your Prayers (Duffy)
07 Tomorrow (Duffy)
08 Loving You (Duffy)
09 Put It in Perspective (Duffy)
10 Big Flame (Duffy)
11 Enough Love (Duffy)
12 Frame Me (Duffy)
13 Smoke without Fire (Duffy)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15110776/Duff_2008_RainonYurParade_atse.zip.html

The album cover photo is a promotional photo from 2008. For the next of both her name and the album title, I exactly imitated the text on the cover of the "Rain on Your Parade" single. I originally wanted to use that single cover for the cover here, but I could only find blurry, low quality versions. I prefer this photo anyway.

4 comments:

  1. You are right, her followup to Rockferry was an enormous letdown. Thanks for this!

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  2. Thanks. Hope she can revive her career. I always enjoyed her voice.

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  3. Do you have the song Frame Me in FLAC? If so, could you please upload?

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  4. I just loved her Rockferry album. I also have one of her songs as signal on my phone. The one you provided here is better than her follow up.
    //Roffe

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