The Beautiful South - Cover Songs, Volume 1 (1989-1995)

It's been a while, but every now and then I like post albums of rare or unreleased cover versions done by a musical artist. Here's a series of three albums of that from the British band the Beautiful South.

The Beautiful South are much better known in Britain than they are in the US. They never had a single top forty hit in the US, but they had lots of them in Britain from their start in 1989 to their end in 2007. I'm not a fan of all their stuff, but their hits are very good. It appears many people in Britain feel the same way, because their greatest hits album "Carry On Up the Charts" went platinum five times over in Britain. They've sold 15 millions records worldwide.

Here's their Wikipedia link if you want to know more:

The Beautiful South - Wikipedia

Although I think their albums are uneven, they liked doing covers, and they had good taste in them, often picking unusual ones to do. So this is an album for people who like excellent songs played well, even if you're not a big fan of the Beautiful South per se.

All but one of the songs here have been officially released. That one, "Get Down on It," is from a concert bootleg, but sounds as good as the other songs here. Most of the others are from the A- or B-sides of singles. Plus there's a song from the band's first album, from a BBC album, and from a various artists compilation.

The band shows a lot of variety on this album, going from a ballad made famous by the Mamas and the Papas to a funk song by Kool in the Gang. In particular, there's a lot of funky, danceable music here.

This album is 39 minutes long.

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

01 Girlfriend - Pebbles
02 What You See Is What You Get - Pretty Purdie & the Playboys
03 Love Wars - Womack & Womack
04 I Started a Joke - Bee Gees
05 You Should Be Dancing - Bee Gees
06 Everybody's Talkin' - Fred Neil
07 Java - Allen Toussaint / Al Hirt
08 Get Down on It - Kool & the Gang
09 Use It Up and Wear It Out - Odyssey
10 Dream a Little Dream of Me - Ozzie Nelson / Mamas & the Papas

Here's the usual song list:

01 Girlfriend (Beautiful South)
02 What You See Is What You Get (Beautiful South)
03 Love Wars (Beautiful South)
04 I Started a Joke (Beautiful South)
05 You Should Be Dancing (Beautiful South)
06 Everybody's Talkin' (Beautiful South)
07 Java (Beautiful South)
08 Get Down on It (Beautiful South)
09 Use It Up and Wear It Out (Beautiful South)
10 Dream a Little Dream of Me (Beautiful South)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15124460/BeautifulSth_1989-1995_CverSongsVolume1_atse.zip.html

It's hard to find good color pictures of this band. I don't know when this is from exactly, but it includes their first female vocalist, Brianna Corrigan, who was only with the band from 1988 to 1992, so it must be from that early time period.