Joan Osborne - Strenuous Acquaintances - Non-Album Tracks (1995-1998)

Last week, I posted a Joan Osborne late 1990s "lost album" called "Curds and Whey." It's a real lost album in the sense that there was an album planned for release with that title that roughly contained those songs, nearly all of which remain officially unreleased until this day. She also has a bunch of songs from those same exact years that weren't part of that album, enough to make up a totally different stray tracks album. That's what this is.

I was planning on posting this in a few weeks, so I could post albums from a variety of other artists in the meantime. But just a few days after I posted "Curds and Whey," I found an updated source for four of the songs on it. One snag with that album is that nearly all the songs come from concert bootlegs, and some of them sound merely good, not great. But this new source sounds much better, so the better quality of four of the ten songs boosts the sound quality of the album as a whole. Thus, I'm posting this now with the hopes that anyone reading this will also be interested in getting the upgraded version of "Curds and Whey."

The link for that album is here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/09/joan-osborne-curds-and-whey-various.html

Anyway, let's get back to the music contained here. In 1995, Osborne had a big hit single - "One of Us" - and an accompanying big hit album, "Relish." Technically, that was her second album. as she released a live album in 1991, but she went from relatively unknown to a star in a short time. Once she was famous, offers for her to appear on movie soundtracks and various artists compilations and the like flowed in. This collects those types of non-album tracks. 

The first three are "Relish" bonus tracks that weren't released until two decades later. The first two appear to be originals. Then there's her hit "One of Us." I've included it because it's a live acoustic version that sounds significantly different (plus I didn't have a better place to put that bonus track). "Brick House" is a cover of the famous 1970s Commodores hit. Apparently, this was considered for inclusion on her "Curds and Whey" album, but I put it here because it would have made that other album too long, and I think it fits better here with covers of other famous songs.

"Strenuous Acquaintances" is an original that also was considered for the "Curds and Whey" album. However, it was released on a movie soundtrack in 1996, so I doubt it would have been included on that album when it should have been released in 1998 or 1999. "Spooky" is another classic cover, and it also was considered for the "Curds and Whey" album. But she released two different versions of it. I put one version on my version of that album, and the other version here.

That leaves a couple of duets included on other people's albums ("Beautiful Side of Madness" and "Passin' Thru"), and more covers of classics that came out on various artists collections ("I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You.")

All in all, I think this is a strong collection. In my opinion, Osborne's top musical attribute is her stellar, soulful voice, so she naturally does well when singing covers of great songs.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Here Comes What's Coming (Joan Osborne)
02 Mighty One (Joan Osborne)
03 One of Us [Live Acoustic] (Joan Osborne)
04 Brick House (Joan Osborne)
05 Beautiful Side of Madness (Joan Osborne & Terrell)
06 I Heard It Through the Grapevine (Joan Osborne & Stevie Wonder)
07 Strenuous Acquaintances (Joan Osborne)
08 Can't Take My Eyes Off of You (Joan Osborne)
09 Spooky (Joan Osborne)
10 Passin' Thru (Joan Osborne & Ricky Scruggs)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15847440/JoanO_1995-1998_StrnuousAcquaintnces_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used a photo of Osborne taken backstage at a concert in Chicago in 1995.