Bad Lip Reading - Seagulls - Selected Best Tracks (2011-2019)

Okay, here's something really weird. You may have heard of "Bad Lip Reading" (BLR). It's a YouTube channel created and run by an anonymous producer who intentionally lip-reads video clips poorly, for comedic effect. Many of his videos have gone viral. In fact, his channel has gotten over a billion views.

His videos rely on the fact that when a person says or sings something, the motions of their mouth could also be the exact same motions of some other words. There are a limited number of alternates of what could be said, and he picks phrases for comedic effect. As an example, there's a line in the BTS hit song "Idol" that goes: "You can't stop me lovin' myself." Yet BLR overdubs that to be "You took a sample of my pasta," and it fits the mouth movements perfectly.

You can read more about BLR at its Wikipedia page:

Bad Lip Reading - Wikipedia

What's maybe less known is that BLR has made about thirty songs using this same technique. The songs will use the mouth movements of a scene from a famous movie, or sometimes a music video. But this is even more impressive, because he creates a brand new song to go with the comedic misunderstood lip reading. Even if it's based on a music video of a hit song, he throws that out and comes up with a totally new song from scratch.

The crazy thing is, these songs are really, really good! The lyrics are bizarre, but the production, performance, melody, and every other aspect are top notch. Apparently, this anonymous person does everything: writing the songs, playing all the instruments, producing the vocals, and even singing all the vocals parts. He uses a vocal modulator to make his voice sound whatever he wants it to be, even female voices.

This is all very amusing. But I have to say, all joking aside, from a pure musical level alone, I'm extremely impressed. It's widely speculated that the anonymous person behind BLR must be a very successful music producer, because there are very few people on the planet with the skills to pull this off so successfully. If you peruse the many thousands of comments on each of the YouTube videos of his songs, you'll see one theme over and over, that people actually prefer the songs he wrote over the songs they were based on (when they're based on music videos), and that they could easily be hit songs if their lyrics weren't so bizarre. 

I totally agree. I'm not much of a fan of modern pop, finding it generally formulaic and musically simple. But it modern pop was like his songs, I'd be much more of a fan. The bizarre, funny lyrics are actually a plus in my opinion, because they're the complete opposite of the same ol', same ol' cliched and simple lyrics of the vast majority of modern hit songs. Plus, the lyrics often vaguely make sense in intriguing ways.

To fully appreciate these songs, you need to do to his YouTube channel and watch the videos. Here's a link to help you get there:

Bad Lip Reading - YouTube

But, heck, I just like hearing these songs even without the video element. This album is for other people who feel the same. However, I only took some of my favorite songs, in the hopes this will make you want to go to his channel and see the rest of them, and well as his other funny videos.

Six of the songs here are based on the "Star Wars" movies. The others are either based on other famous movies or TVs or music videos of very popular hits. If you go to the Wikipedia page linked to above, you can find charts that explain the source material of each song.

As an aside, I'm pleased to say that many of the famous people who had their movies or songs parodied by BLR have publicly commented how much they've enjoyed his work. For instance, Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars films, said this in 2017: "I love them, and I showed Carrie [Fisher, who played Princess Leia] the Yoda one… we were dying. I showed it to her in her trailer. She loved it. I retweeted it..." He actually went on to take part in another BLR video, reading the vocal lines of the character Han Solo in a scene. 

As another example, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the maker of the smash hit play "Hamilton," called one of the songs here, "Bushes of Love," "THE summer jam of 2017" and said that BLR had "made my life" by parodying some of his songs. In my opinion, in a better alternate universe, many of these would be hit songs in their own right.

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 Gang Fight (Bad Lip Reading)
02 Carl Poppa (Bad Lip Reading)
03 Hey Choo Choo Go (Bad Lip Reading)
04 Bushes of Love (Bad Lip Reading)
05 Seagulls [Stop It Now] (Bad Lip Reading)
06 Not the Future (Bad Lip Reading)
07 Hostiles on the Hill (Bad Lip Reading)
08 Ice God of Hungary (Bad Lip Reading)
09 It's Not a Moon (Bad Lip Reading)
10 Chocolate Lagoon (Bad Lip Reading)
11 Sample of My Pasta (Bad Lip Reading)
12 My Stick (Bad Lip Reading)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15124389/BadLpRead_2011-2019_Seaglls_atse.zip.html

The cover photo uses a still of a scene featuring Yoda from the Star Wars move "The Empire Strikes Back." But someone, maybe BLR, added in a microphone. So I figured that was ideal for this cover.

Carole King - No Easy Way Down - Selected Best Tracks (1968-1970)

I just updated two of the three albums I've posted of Carole King's excellent demos. Both of those albums have one previously unreleased and unbootlegged demo added. I thought about making an announcement post about this, but decided instead I would post something else by King and mention it there. 

I looked around for what else to post from her, and came up with this one. One might call it a stray tracks album, but really, all but one of the songs are from two studio albums: "Now That Everything's Been Said," released in 1968, and "Writer," released in 1970. They were her first two solo albums, and she was still finding her way with them, so they're mixed bags. But if you combine the best from both, it makes for a very strong album.

Of course, the next album she released was "Tapestry" in 1971. Her first two albums didn't even make the charts, partly due to the fact that she didn't perform concerts or do other promotion. But "Tapestry" would go on to be one of the best selling albums of all time, with at least 25 million copies sold, and would be highly critically acclaimed, ranking 25 on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the 500 best albums of all time.

In truth, her first two albums weren't that different in terms of production or song quality. King is one of the most commercially successful songwriters on all time, and had big hits since the early 1960s. For these two albums, she tended to look backwards more than forwards, frequently covering her own songs that had been hits for others. For instance, "Wasn't Born to Follow" was made famous by the Byrds, "Hi-De-Ho (That Old Sweet Roll)" by Blood, Sweat and Tears, "Goin' Back" by Dusty Sprinfield (and the Byrds), "I Can't Hear You (No More)" by Betty Everett, "Up on the Roof" by the Drifters, and "Child of Mine" has been covered by at least 25 artists. But she also included some newer songs that dealt with more mature themes and fit better into the emerging singer-songwriter mode.

In my opinion, had King put together the best songs from these two albums after her huge post "Tapestry" success, it would have sold many millions. 

By the way, the last song is not from either of those albums. Instead, it was a song she wrote and gave to Merry Clayton to release in 1971. She only did a version in concert in 1971, which was released decades later. I removed the audience noise to make it fit in with the other tracks.

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 Snow Queen (Carole King)
02 Wasn't Born to Follow (Carole King)
03 Now That Everything's Been Said (Carole King)
04 Paradise Alley (Carole King)
05 Why Are You Leaving (Carole King)
06 Hi-De-Ho [That Old Sweet Roll] (Carole King)
07 No Easy Way Down (Carole King)
08 Child of Mine (Carole King)
09 Goin' Back (Carole King)
10 Eventually (Carole King)
11 Raspberry Jam (Carole King)
12 I Can't Hear You [No More] (Carole King)
13 Up on the Roof (Carole King)
14 After All This Time (Carole King)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687662/CARLKNG1968-1970_NoEsyWayDwn_atse.zip.html

For the cover photo, I could have used the cover of one of the two albums, but I thought that would be boring. Instead, I saw a promotional photo of her from 1970 that I really liked. It was in black and white, so I colorized it.

Aretha Franklin - Hold On, I'm Coming - Selected Best Tracks (1980-1982)

Earlier this year, the Aretha Franklin box set "Aretha" was released. It dealt with all parts of her musical career. I haven't been that big on the later part of her career, from the early 1980s until her death in 2018, and I'm still not. But the box set made me realize there was a lot of good music from her later career that I'd missed. So I used to have two stray tracks albums for the early 1980s to the end of her career. I'm revamped that, so I now have four albums for that time period. Two of them are new, and two are radically changed. Here's the first new one.

My main problem with later music from her is the bad production. This album deals with three years at the start of the 1980s, before the production really got bad, in my opinion. For this album, anything she did is fair game. I included "School Days" from her 1980 album "Aretha," "Hold On, I'm Coming" from her 1981 album "Love All the Hurt Away," and "Jump to It" and "It's Your Thing" from her 1982 album "Jump to It."

As you can see, that means a majority of the songs don't come from her studio albums. I think non-album tracks tended to not suffer from the usual production problems from that time period. Three of those songs are officially unreleased: a version of "Sweet Sixteen" with B. B. King, "God Bless the Child," and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" with blues legend Big Mama Thornton. All three of those come from TV show appearances, so the sound quality is pretty good.

Two more songs come from the "Aretha" box set: "Amazing Grace" and a duet version of "I Say a Little Prayer" with Dionne Warwick. Finally, "Think" was a hit for her in 1968, but I prefer this version from the "Blues Brothers" movie soundtrack, because the original version only has one iteration of the chorus, and this version has two.

This album is 41 minutes long.

If you're interested in this time period of her career and you've download the early 1980s stray tracks album "Freeway of Love" already, I highly, highly recommend you get the updated version I'm posting at the same time I post this. That album has been radically transformed, with most of the songs different than before. Here's the link to the revised "Freeway of Love":

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/08/aretha-franklin-freeway-of-love-various.html

01 Think [1980 Version] (Blues Brothers with Aretha Franklin)
02 School Days (Aretha Franklin)
03 Sweet Sixteen (Aretha Franklin & B. B. King)
04 Amazing Grace (Aretha Franklin)
05 God Bless the Child (Aretha Franklin)
06 Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out (Aretha Franklin & Big Mama Thornton)
07 I Say a Little Prayer (Dionne Warwick & Aretha Franklin)
08 Hold On, I'm Coming (Aretha Franklin)
09 Jump to It (Aretha Franklin)
10 It's Your Thing (Aretha Franklin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15114694/ArethaF_1980-1982_HldOnComing_atse.zip.html

The cover uses a promotional photo from 1980. 

Aretha Franklin - Rolling in the Deep - Selected Best Tracks (2002-2014)

In late 2021, the Aretha Franklin box set "Aretha" was released. It dealt with her entire career. Listening to it, I realized I'd missed some good songs from the latter part of her career. I found enough to turn the two stray tracks albums from the early 1980s until her death in 2018 to four stray tracks albums. This is the last one. (Due to declining health, she didn't sing much in her last four years.)

Generally speaking, I found her music from the 1980s on to be marred by bad production. So only four songs here are from her studio albums. There's two songs from her 2011 album "A Woman Falling Out of Love": "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and "Sweet Sixteen." And there's two songs from her 2014 album "Sings the Great Diva Classics": "No One" and "Rolling in the Deep."

Speaking of "Rolling in the Deep," of course that was a huge hit by Adele. Personally, I think Adele's version is fantastic. It's such an inherently great song that Franklin's version is pretty good too, even though hers isn't nearly as good as Adele's. However, there's a big problem with Franklin's version, in my opinion: near the end, she switches into some of the soul classic "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." That's a problem, because the sentiment of that song is the exact opposite of "Rolling in the Deep!" It might work musically, but it's a disaster lyrically. So I've created my own version here where I've tried my best to cut out the "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" part. The edits aren't that great due the way different parts of the song overlap, but I did what I could.

As for the other songs here, two more have been officially released. "At Last," a duet with Lou Rawls, comes from the "Aretha" box set. And "You've Got a Friend," a duet with Ronald Isley, comes from a Ronald Isley album.

Although the remaining songs are officially unreleased, they generally sound very good. Some of them come from TV show performances.

This album is 49 minutes long.

In making this album, I radically transformed a different stray tracks album that used to cover this time period, "A Deeper Love." So if you get this, I highly recommend you get the updated version of that one. The link is here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/08/aretha-franklin-deeper-love-various.html

01 At Last (Aretha Franklin & Lou Rawls)
02 Until You Come Back to Me [That's What I'm Gonna Do] [Live] (Stevie Wonder & Aretha Franklin)
03 I Adore You [And I Abhor You] [Edit] (Aretha Franklin)
04 Make Them Hear You (Aretha Franklin)
05 You've Got a Friend (Aretha Franklin & Ronald Isley)
06 My Country 'Tis of Thee (Aretha Franklin)
07 Sweet Sixteen (Aretha Franklin)
08 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Aretha Franklin)
09 I Will Always Love You (Aretha Franklin)
10 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher (Aretha Franklin)
11 No One (Aretha Franklin)
12 Rolling in the Deep [Edit] (Aretha Franklin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zN2xCRNE

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/CDUoBSmJiWtzgY0/file

Franklin's version of "Rolling in the Deep" had a limited release as a single. The cover art I used here is simply the single cover. In March 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Aretha Franklin - Rock with Me - Selected Best Tracks (1975-1979)

If you've downloaded the Aretha Franklin albums that I've posted here, perhaps you'll recognize this one. I previously posted an album with this exact same name and cover art. But I'm deleting that and reposting this as a new album, because I've drastically changed it.

This album used to contain everything I consider good from her rather fallow late 1970s output. About half of it came from songs released on her albums, and about half were unreleased songs that she largely did on TV shows. But about a month ago as I write this (October 2021), a new box set called "Aretha" was released. It made me realize there was more to this time period that I'd missed.

So I've made two albums that cover that same late 1970s time period. This one collects the best songs from her rather spotty late 1970s albums. The other one, which I'm also posting today, collects the unreleased songs she did in those same years. This works out nicely in that both resulting albums are in the typical 40 to 50 minute album length range.

I think it's undisputed that the prime of her career was from 1967 to 1974. I have all of her albums from that era. But starting around 1975, she took a big dive, both in terms of commercial success and critical acclaim. What happened to her happened to nearly all big soul artists around that time. Disco started to become big, and other musical changes happened like a new prominence of synthesizers and drum machines. Most soul artists changed their sound in order to sound contemporary, and it was a disaster. Franklin's disco music has to be the nadir of her long career. She rebounded some in the 1980s, especially commercially, but still, her music after 1974 was a shadow of her glory days, in my opinion.

Her best album from this time period has to be "Sparkle," released in 1976. It was entirely written and produced by soul great Curtis Mayfield, and his involvement seems to have helped matters a lot. So I've included five songs from that album, but even that one is hit or miss. 

As the 1970s went on, things went from bad to worse, the more disco took hold. Her 1978 and 1979 albums, "Almighty Fire" and "La Dita" have to be her low point. I tried to include at least one song from each of her five late 1970s albums, but it was tough to come up with even one good song from each of those.

So yeah, individually, most of these albums aren't that good. But by picking out the best songs, I think it makes for a good album, overall.

If you think I missed some gems, please let me know.

01 Mr. D.J. [5 for the D.J.] (Aretha Franklin)
02 It Only Happens [When I Look at You] (Aretha Franklin)
03 Rock with Me (Aretha Franklin)
04 Look into Your Heart (Aretha Franklin)
05 Something He Can Feel (Aretha Franklin)
06 Sparkle (Aretha Franklin)
07 Hooked On Your Love (Aretha Franklin)
08 Break It to Me Gently (Aretha Franklin)
09 Mumbles - I've Got the Music in Me (Aretha Franklin)
10 When I Think about You (Aretha Franklin)
11 Honey I Need Your Love (Aretha Franklin)
12 I'm Your Speed (Aretha Franklin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/t9ZLzjxL

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/mi4ygPxrtZZMzhx/file

I made the cover based on a photo from the 1970s but I don't know the exact year.In March 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Aretha Franklin - The Columbia Years, Volume 2 - Selected Best Tracks (1964-1966)

Note that, back in 2018, I posted an album at this blog of Aretha Franklin's tenure at her first record company, Columbia Records. It was simply called "The Columbia Years." Last month (August 2021), a new box set of her entire music career was released, simply called "Aretha." Listening to that, I found some good songs from her Columbia time period that I'd missed. Then I went back and listened to more of her stuff from that time period, and found more. 

The net result was that I found enough material to turn a single album about 45 minutes long into two albums that long. So, if you're interested in this music at all, note that this is called "Volume 2," and make sure you get "Volume 1" as well. The songs are in rough chronological order, and this covers the second half of that time. But, in my opinion, her musical sound was fairly consistent during her time at Columbia, so "Volume 1" is just as good as "Volume 2."

1964 was a particularly busy year for Franklin. She recorded four albums that year, though one of them was shelved until much later. So most of the songs here come from that year. I believe she last recorded for Columbia in 1965, though some of it wasn't released until 1966. As far as I can tell, she didn't record any albums in 1966. But in early 1967 she cut a new album for Atlantic Records ("I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You") that would be a big hit and send her on the path to becoming a superstar.

As a whole, I like her music on Atlantic Records much better than what she did for Columbia. That said, I selected the songs that I considered the best, which usually are also the ones with a similar sound to her Atlantic style. I tended to avoid the syrupy ballads with lots of strings in favor of more soulful songs. Most of these could have fitted on her late 1960s albums without anyone blinking an eye. So if you like those you should like this stuff, though there are fewer uptempo songs.

This album is 46 minutes long. Please don't forget to check out Volume 1. Here's the link for that:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/08/aretha-franklin-columbia-years-various.html

01 Lee Cross (Aretha Franklin)
02 A Little Bit of Soul (Aretha Franklin)
03 Nobody Knows The Way I Feel This Morning (Aretha Franklin)
04 Evil Gal Blues (Aretha Franklin)
05 Soulville (Aretha Franklin)
06 I'll Keep On Smiling (Aretha Franklin)
07 Every Little Bit Hurts (Aretha Franklin)
08 The Shoop Shoop Song [It's in His Kiss] (Aretha Franklin)
09 Walk On By (Aretha Franklin)
10 One Room Paradise (Aretha Franklin)
11 Running Out of Fools (Aretha Franklin)
12 Muddy Water (Aretha Franklin)
13 One Step Ahead (Aretha Franklin)
14 [No, No] I'm Losing You (Aretha Franklin)
15 Can't You Just See Me (Aretha Franklin)
16 Take a Look (Aretha Franklin)
17 Cry like a Baby (Aretha Franklin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EHQG27D2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/M0yFlXLIXUI87Hi/file

After splitting the original "Columbia Years" album I made in two, I decided to make new covers for both parts. I was only album to find one good color photo of Franklin from the right time period, but one was enough! :) This is a promo photo from 1964. In March 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Tommy Keene - Keene's Covers - Selected Cover Tracks (1979-2017)

I have to admit that I don't know much about Tommy Keene on his music. He had a limited but dedicated following in the "power pop" genre. He was best known for the minor hit "Places That Are Gone" in 1984. He died in 2017 due to heart failure. I've been meaning to hear more of his music, but I've got a mountain of stuff on my "to listen to" list, and I haven't gotten around to it.

So why the heck am I posting this?! Well, a musical acquaintance of mine who goes by Lil Panda liked some of the covers collections I've posted here, such as the one for Blondie, and has given me suggestions on some other artists who could benefit from the same treatment. So I plan to post more covers collections, by and by. In Keene's case, Lil Panda sent me a whole bunch of his cove versions. Then I went and found a few more he'd missed. I also removed some that I thought weren't that strong. The result is a 55-minute-long fun selection of rocking songs that anyone can enjoy, whether you're a fan of Keene's music or not.

I think the best way to get you to listen to this is show who did the original versions of these covers. If you like those artists, or power pop in general, chances are very good you'll like this.

01 Hippy Hippy Shake - Chan Romero / Beatles
02 Hey Little Child - Alex Chilton
03 Teenage Head - Flamin' Groovies
04 Kill Your Sons - Lou Reed
05 Our Car Club - Beach Boys
06 Shake Some Action - Flamin' Groovies
07 Tattoo - Who
08 Carrie Anne - Hollies
09 Lost a Number - Nils Lofgren
10 Have You Seen My Baby - Randy Newman / Flamin' Groovies
11 The Puppet - Echo & the Bunnymen
12 Much Too Much - Who
13 Ride On Baby - Rolling Stones
14 Nighttime - Big Star
15 Out of the Blue - Roxy Music
16 Love You To - Beatles
17 Raymond Chandler Evening - Robyn Hitchcock

So, basically, Tommy Keene had very good taste in music. ;) Pretty much all the music he likes to cover is the same stuff I like. I especially appreciate that he generally avoided the big hits in favor of lesser known gems. For instance, if someone is going to cover a Beatles song, what are the odds it would be "Love You To?" Or when you think of the Beach Boys, "Our Car Club" isn't exactly the first song to come to mind. So this is a nice way to bring more appreciation to some of those more obscure songs.

Three of the songs are officially unreleased: "Lost a Number," plus the last two, "Love You To," and "Raymond Chandler Evening." But I had very high sound quality standards for this album, so anything that didn't sound as good as the studio tracks got cut. I had to reject a handful of nice covers as a result.

A bunch of the songs come from Keene's one and only all-covers album, "Excitement at Your Feet," which was released in 2013. Frankly, I could have included all the songs from that album, since they're all good, but I didn't want to discourage people from buying it. Instead, if you like this, check that out and you'll find even more covers in the same vein.

01 Hippy Hippy Shake (Tommy Keene)
02 Hey Little Child (Tommy Keene)
03 Teenage Head (Tommy Keene)
04 Kill Your Sons (Tommy Keene)
05 Our Car Club (Tommy Keene)
06 Shake Some Action (Tommy Keene)
07 Tattoo (Tommy Keene)
08 Carrie Anne (Tommy Keene)
09 Lost a Number (Tommy Keene)
10 Have You Seen My Baby (Tommy Keene)
11 The Puppet (Tommy Keene)
12 Much Too Much (Tommy Keene)
13 Ride On Baby (Tommy Keene)
14 Nighttime (Tommy Keene)
15 Out of the Blue (Tommy Keene)
16 Love You To (Tommy Keene)
17 Raymond Chandler Evening (Tommy Keene)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15635019/TommyKne_1979-2017_KeensCovrs_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is a publicity photo from 2011.

Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack - Voodoo Knife - Selected Best Tracks (1982)

Here's a type of album I almost never do. Some people like to compile albums that never existed, such as picking the best of the Beatles' solo songs to create albums they might have recorded had the Beatles stayed together after 1970. With a few exceptions, such as some of my Crosby, Stills, Nash (and/or) Young albums, I try to stay more grounded in what actually happened. But I'm going to break that rule and make another speculative album.

In 1982, Nick Lowe recorded and released his first true solo album without Rockpile, "Nick the Knife." Also in 1982, Paul Carrack recorded and released his second solo album, "Suburban Voodoo." At first glance, the two albums seemingly have nothing to do with each other. But actually, they're so closely related that I've taken the best songs from both and made one album out of them. I've even combined the two album titles to create the title "Voodoo Knife." It's nonsensical, but it works for me.

So why the heck did I do this? For starters, the exact same band, Noise to Go, which included both Lowe and Carrack, played on all the songs for both albums. Lowe also produced Carrack's album. Furthermore, he wrote or co-wrote six of the songs on it. These two albums were the start of a fruitful collaboration between Lowe and Carrack. From 1982 to 1985, they did all their concert tours together. Lowe had just spent the previous four or five years collaborating with Dave Edmunds and the rest of the band Rockpile, so this was kind of Rockpile 2.0, with Carrack replacing Edmunds.

Furthermore, the two 1982 albums sound united. An AllMusic.com reviewer noted that Carrack's album "sounded very much like a Lowe album with Carrack singing." A Trouser Press reviewer similarly noted that Carrack's album "sounds like the souled-up flipside of 'Nick the Knife' - if anything, it's better. Yet it succeeds because of Lowe's production and composing presence, which complements Carrack's excellent voice with the kind of pop smarts that bring out his best."

On top of all that, both Lowe's and Carrack's albums had a bunch of excellent songs on each album, as well as a few duds on each. If one combines the two albums together, one gets all the good songs while jettisoning the rest. I think Lowe's 1977 album "Jesus of Cool" (a.k.a. "Pure Pop for Now People") and his 1979 album "Labour of Lust" are brilliant five-star albums. By combining the best of Lowe's and Carrack's 1982 albums, I think one gets an album that is very much at that same high level, and in the same rocking, catchy vein.

In putting this album together, I discarded three Lowe songs ("Let Me Kiss Ya," "Zulu Kiss," and "From Now On") and five Carrack songs ("I'm in Love," "What a Way to Go," "So Right, So Wrong," "Call Me Tonight," and "I Found Love"). Note though that Carrack also covered "From Now On," a song Lowe wrote, so it's included here as the Carrack version.

The end result is an album that's 42 minutes long, which is an ideal album length for that era. Lowe and Carrack both get seven songs. Personally, I think that if they'd combined efforts, they would have had a classic album that was a big seller. Instead, their separate 1982 albums just did okay, with the bright spot being Carrack getting a US Top 40 hit with "I Need You" (a song Lowe co-wrote, by the way). I've started the album with "Always Better with You," because that song is on my short list of songs most deserving of being a huge hit if only they'd gotten the right promotion and exposure and so on. It sounds very much like a 1960s Motown hit to my ears.

01 Akways Better with You (Paul Carrack)
02 Burning (Nick Lowe)
03 Lesson in Love (Paul Carrack)
04 Heart (Nick Lowe)
05 I Need You (Paul Carrack)
06 Stick It Where the Sun Don't Shine (Nick Lowe)
07 Queen of Sheba (Nick Lowe)
08 Don't Give My Heart a Break (Paul Carrack)
09 My Heart Hurts (Nick Lowe)
10 A Little Unkind (Paul Carrack)
11 Out of Touch (Paul Carrack)
12 Too Many Teardrops (Nick Lowe)
13 Raining, Raining (Nick Lowe)
14 From Now On (Paul Carrack)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696726/NICKLWENPULCRRCK1982_VodooKnfeAltrnate_atse.zip.html

The cover art took a lot of work for me to do. Basically, I started with the cover of Carrack's "Suburban Voodoo" album. But I did a lot of rearranging with the yellow circles and new text to fit the new artist names and the new album name. I also removed the photo of Carrack in the middle and replaced it with a photo of Lowe and Carrack together, from around 1982. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any good color photos, so I tinted this one blue.

Chris Clark - Chris Clark - Selected Best Tracks (1968-1969)

I recently posted two albums of material from Chris Clark. This is the third and last, because she only had a relatively brief recording career, from 1965 to 1969. If you don't know who she is, she was a soul singer for the Motown label. But she didn't have much commercial success despite being very talented. The fact that she was a tall, platinum-haired white woman singing a type of music beloved mainly by black audiences at the time didn't help.

She put out an album in 1967 called "Soul Sounds," and my last post on her was my drastically changed version of that. She put out her second and last album in 1969, called "CC Rides Again." Unfortunately, it was a mess. Most of the songs were predictable covers of the biggest hit songs of the year. She gave good performances as usual, but clearly Motown wasn't giving her good material.

On top of that, many of the songs began with long instrumental passages from famous classical pieces that had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the song. Apparently, it was some kind of failed effort by the producers to appear hip or experimental. For the songs I've chosen from the album, I've lopped all those sections off.

But I didn't do that very much, because it turns out that only four of the 14 songs here come from "CC Rides Again." As I said, that just wasn't a very good album. She was recording much better material but it stayed in the vaults until decades later. Another eight songs are from 1968 or 1969, but not officially released at the time.

The last two songs are strange, because they come from much, much later. After 1969, she basically gave up on her music career, but stayed with Motown Records and moved her way up in the company until she was the head creative director. (She did record a few songs in the later 1970s, but they're disco tracks and not worthy of inclusion here.)

However, her reputation as a soul singer has grown over time, and in the 2000s she began performing some concerts, especially in Britain, where the classic Motown sound is more appreciated by the "Northern Soul" crowd. That led to her recording two new songs in 2011. I've added them at the end. If you didn't read this, you probably wouldn't notice the massive time gap, because they're good songs and they sound exactly as if they were recorded in the late 1960s instead. It's too bad she hasn't recorded more in recent years, because her voice hasn't lost any of its power.

By the way, I couldn't come up with a good name for this album, so I decided to simply call it "Chris Clark."  I was influenced by the cover art I chose, which has her name is massive letters, without really having room for more text.

01 Feelin' Good (Chris Clark)
02 I'm Gonna Be True (Chris Clark)
03 He's Good for Me (Chris Clark)
04 Bad Seed (Chris Clark)
05 Can I See You in the Morning (Chris Clark)
06 If You Let Me Baby (Chris Clark)
07 C. C. Rider (Chris Clark)
08 One (Chris Clark)
09 In the Ghetto (Chris Clark)
10 You've Made Me So Very Happy (Chris Clark)
11 My World Is Empty without You (Chris Clark)
12 The Last Thing on My Mind (Chris Clark)
13 Dream or Cry (Chris Clark)
14 Hang It Up (Chris Clark)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15100216/ChrisCrk_1968-1969_ChrisClrk_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used the cover of an EP as the framework. But the lower half contained the names of four songs with a very tiny photo of Clark. I erased all that and replaced it with a much larger photo of her.  Good color photos of her in her late 1960s heyday are very few and far between. I actually found two different versions of the same photo that had been cropped to show only parts of her head. I stitched them together to show her full head. I'm happy at how that turned out.

Chris Clark - Love Gone Bad - Selected Best Tracks (1965-1966)

I'm a very big fan of music from the Motown record label in the 1960s and early 1970s. Their songs were very hit or miss, but when they hit, it was fantastic. But as great as those many Motown hits were, there were many songs, and even entire artists, who were overlooked. Chris Clark is one of those overlooked artists, so I'm going to try to raise her profile here.

In the 1960s, Clark had a remarkable, soulful voice. But she was white. Not only that, but she was white, tall (six feet high), and had platinum blonde hair. This was a problem, because she didn't just want to do "blue-eyed soul" mainly targeted at white audiences, like the Righteous Brothers or Mitch Ryder did, she wanted to do the same type of music as the big Motown stars, and be treated like them. But the 1960s were a decade of great racial tensions. When her songs were played on the radio, listeners would assume that she was black at first. But then her records often would no longer be played when it was eventually discovered she was white, and she sometimes even got booed when she played in front of black audiences. And yet her music was too "soulful" for most white audiences.

On top of all that, it turns out that Clark was romantically linked to Berry Gordy, the head of Motown Records, for a couple of years. This led many people to assume that she probably had no talent and was just given a chance to record some songs due to sleeping with the boss. On top of that, Gordy was black, and interracial romances were controversial back in those days.

But it turns out she was more than just a pretty face, or even just a pretty face with a great voice. She had many talents beyond singing. For instance, she actually cowrote many of her songs, though she usually went uncredited. After her singing career petered out at the end of the 1960s, she stayed with Motown and took on a variety of creative roles, eventually becoming "head of creative affairs" for the whole company. She got an Academy Award nomination for cowriting the screenplay to the movie "Lady Sings the Blues." Later in life, she's made a career out of being a painter. In an alternate universe, she could have had a big and long singing career if she'd been able to direct that creative energy towards music.

Ironically, given her romance with Gordy, she actually was treated badly by Gordy and Motown when it came to her musical career. Gordy had a consistent history of pushing the vast majority of his company's resources to promote his favorite artists, especially the Supremes, and all but ignoring many other artists who arguably had more potential. Clark was in the latter category. Motown did release some singles from her, and two albums, one in 1967 and the other in 1969. But she generally got the leftover songs the big Motown stars didn't want, and the vast majority of what she recorded never got released until decades later.

This is the first of three Chris Clark albums I plan on posting. There isn't much overlap between the songs on those three albums and her two studio albums, since most of her best stuff remained in the can at the time.

One song on this album, "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday," is a case in point. Clark was the very first artist to record this song, in 1966. Her version should have been a hit, but it went unreleased. Stevie Wonder later did a version of it that was closely modeled on Clark's version, and he had a big hit with it in 1969, going all the way to number two with it in Britain.

Clark's recorded output is littered with similar should-have-been hits, including songs that actually were released as singles but went nowhere. For instance, "Love's Gone Bad" is her best known song. It has become better known over the years, thanks to it being included in lots of Motown various artists hit compilations. If you listen to it, it sounds like a sure-fire hit. But actually, it only made it to 105 on the US pop chart, and 41 on the US R&B chart. So even that one wasn't a hit. Perhaps her being a white woman singing soul music at a time of considerable racial tension doomed her chances, but I think more of it had to do with Motown merely going through the motions of promoting her.

Happily, the things that held her back in the 1960s become increasingly moot as time moves on. Today, we can just listen to the music and not worry much about what was unreleased or not promoted, and judge it on its own merits. I think Clark was a great soul singer who would often take B-quality material and make it sound like A-quality material. In a better world (including a color-blind world), she should have been one of the Motown greats, especially if she'd been given better material. I hope you'll listen and agree.

All the songs on this album pre-date her first album, which would come out in 1967, though a couple of the songs would end up on it. Only five of the 13 songs here were released at the time. I haven't come close to including all of her stuff. Gordy had a bad habit of trying to saddle his Motown artists with "supper club" music, cheesy mainstream pop supposed to appeal to white audiences. I've tended to avoid that and favored her more upbeat songs that are truer to the real Motown sound.

This album is only 37 minutes long, but that was typical of Motown albums for that era. In fact, it's probably longer than average. Clark's 1967 album, which I will deal with in my next post about her, was 31 minutes long.

01 Do Right Baby, Do Right (Chris Clark)
02 Don't Be Too Long (Chris Clark)
03 In the Neighbourhood (Chris Clark)
04 I Just Can't Forget Him (Chris Clark)
05 Check Yourself (Chris Clark)
06 Everything Is Good about You (Chris Clark)
07 Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday (Chris Clark)
08 Do I Love You [Indeed I Do] (Chris Clark)
09 Love's Gone Bad (Chris Clark)
10 Mighty Good Lovin' (Chris Clark)
11 Put Yourself in My Place (Chris Clark)
12 Something's Wrong (Chris Clark)
13 Never Trust a Man (Chris Clark)
14 I Still Love You (Chris Clark)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15100181/ChrisCrk_1965-1966_LoveGoneBad_atse.zip.html

I named this album "Love Gone Bad" instead of "Love's Gone Bad," the title of her almost-hit, because of this  cover I found that uses the phrase "Love Gone Bad." (I'm guessing it was some kind of repackaging of her first album.) I made a change by replacing a "mono" logo with a "stereo" one, since most or all of the songs are in stereo.

Aimee Mann & 'Til Tuesday - The Best of 'Til Tuesday - Selected Best Tracks (1984-1988)

When it comes to female singers, the public puts a lot of weight on physical beauty and the singing voice. Songwriting has generally been less important, since songs can be written by others. But every now and then, a woman comes along who is beautiful, has a great voice, AND is a top notch songwriter. Kirsty MacColl is one example. Another is Aimee Mann.

Mann has gotten a lot of critical acclaim for her solo career, though her sales haven't been as great as they should be. However, a lot of people forget that she started out as the lead singer and main songwriter for the new wave band 'Til Tuesday back in the 1980s. I plan on posting a lot of albums of Mann's solo stuff. But I think before I do that, it makes sense to cover her 'Til Tuesday work.

Personally, I think 'Til Tuesday was very hit or miss. Sometimes, they came up with great songs, like their big hit "Voices Carry." Another example would be "Coming Up Close," which I'd consider one of the top five songs of Mann's entire career. "The Other End (Of the Telescope)," a song cowriten by Mann and Elvis Costello, is great too. But too often, the songs were just ordinary, and were marred by dated 1980s production values. So I've compiled my own 'Til Tuesday "best of" for people who don't want to own all three of their albums. There have been several official best ofs, but those have included some songs I don't like and left off some songs I do like.

In my opinion, Mann was still learning how to write and produce consistently excellent songs in her 'Til Tuesday years. This can be seen by the drastic improvement from the band's first album to their third one. The first album has the classic "Voices Carry" and not much else, while the third album has lots of good songs. So nearly half of this compilation comes from the third album.

It turns out 'Til Tuesday has lots of unreleased songs, at least an album's worth. I've listened to a bunch, and while they were as good as many of the songs on their albums, they didn't really stand out enough for me to include them here. But I did find one I like which I've included, called "Tension." If you want to hear more of their unreleased stuff, check out the band's live concerts on YouTube.

One song here, "Sign of Love," is credited to just Aimee Mann. But I think that's a mere technicality, since it was played in concert by 'Til Tuesday at the time, and sounds just like their other songs.

01 Love in a Vacuum [Demo] ('Til Tuesday)
02 Tension ('Til Tuesday)
03 Voices Carry ('Til Tuesday)
04 Coming Up Close ('Til Tuesday)
05 Have Mercy ('Til Tuesday)
06 What about Love ('Til Tuesday)
07 Yesterday ('Til Tuesday)
08 Do It Again ('Til Tuesday)
09 Sign of Love (Aimee Mann)
10 Everything's Different Now ('Til Tuesday)
11 Why Must I ('Til Tuesday)
12 J for Jules ('Til Tuesday)
13 [Believed You Were] Lucky ('Til Tuesday)
14 Limits to Love ('Til Tuesday)
15 The Other End [Of the Telescope] ('Til Tuesday)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687552/AIMEMNN1984-1988_BestofTilTuesdy_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art using a publicity photo of Aimee Mann from her 'Til Tuesday era.

Aretha Franklin - A Deeper Love - Selected Best Songs (1993-1999)

I previously posted a version of this album that dealt with the years 1986 to 2014. But in late 2021, the Aretha Franklin box set "Aretha" was released. I found a bunch of songs from the latter part of her career that I'd previously missed. So this album has narrowed in scope, and I made a new album that deals with the years 2002 to 2014.

In the 1990s, her good songs became rarer and rarer. She continued to chase musical trends like hip hop, New Jack, house, and so on. The results were not pretty. Plus, she just didn't put as much time and effort into her musical career as before (which naturally has been the pattern for most artists as they move into their senior years). For her entire career up until about 1982, she generally put out an album a year. But after that, it was usually three or more years between albums.

Funnily enough, the vast majority of the songs on this album have not been officially released. In fact, the only performance taken from one of her studio albums is "A Rose Is Still a Rose" from her 1998 album of the same title. Most of the rest are live performances. I'm generally not a fan of soul / R&B music from this time period (up to including today!), and a big reason for that is the production. For instance, the use of Autotune nearly always makes me cringe. Live versions often are better, because the practicalities of having a band play the songs can remove some of the production excesses.

A case in point in the song "A Deeper Love." I didn't like the song at all, even though it was a hit. It was Franklin's attempt at house music, and I really don't like house music. But I found a live version played on a TV show that sounds significantly different, and much better, in my opinion.

The only other officially released versions here are "Someday We'll All Be Free" from a movie soundtrack, and "Nessun Dorma" from the "Aretha" box set.

Sometimes when she played live or for TV shows during this time period, she avoided the bad production typical of the era. A case in point are the songs"Talk to Me" and "The Makings of You." She sang and played them solo on piano as part of a two-hour TV interview in 1994. In my opinion, it's very refreshing to hear her in this kind of stripped down format later in her career. She did "The Makings of You" with a full band for a 1994 Curtis Mayfield tribute album, also in 1994, but this version is much better, in my opinion.

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 Someday We'll All Be Free (Aretha Franklin)
02 Just to See Her (Aretha Franklin & Smokey Robinson)
03 Border Song [Holy Moses] (Elton John & Aretha Franklin)
04 Ol' Man River (Aretha Franklin)
05 S'Wonderful (Aretha Franklin)
06 A Deeper Love (Aretha Franklin)
07 Talk to Me (Aretha Franklin)
08 The Makings of You (Aretha Franklin)
09 How High the Moon (Aretha Franklin)
10 The Way We Were - The Best Is Yet to Come (Aretha Franklin)
11 Nessun Dorma (Aretha Franklin)
12 A Rose Is Still a Rose (Aretha Franklin with Lauryn Hill)
13 Lawdy Miss Clawdy - Dear Heart - Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte - Shotgun (Aretha Franklin with Erma Franklin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15115151/ArethaF_1993-1999_ADeeprLove_atse.zip.html

The cover art is based on a photo from the latter part of her career, but I don't know the year.

Aretha Franklin - Freeway of Love - Selected Best Tracks (1985-1989)

I'm my opinion, from the late 1970s to the end of her career, Aretha Franklin's music is hit or miss. So I've created stray tracks albums that uses the best of anything she did in those years, be it from her studio albums or non-album tracks.

I had previously made a version of this album that dealt with the years 1980 to 1985. But I found more material I liked that radically transformed this album. It now deals with 1985 to 1989. Note how the time period is very different, so nearly all the songs are different.

Franklin's career recovered somewhat in the early 1980s after hitting a nadir in the peak disco years of the late 1980s. Probably the peak of this period of her career was her 1985 album "Who's Zooming Who?" which contained three big hits. Those are the first three songs here.

The next two songs come from her 1986 album "Aretha," including a number one hit duet with George Michael, "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)." The last song on this album, "He's the Boy," comes from her 1989 album "Through the Storm."

The rest of the songs are non-album tracks. Three of them are officially unreleased: "You Are So Beautiful," a duet with Billy Preston, "Shine," and "Please, Please, Please," a duet with James Brown.

This album is 48 minutes long.

If you had the old version of this album, be sure to also get "Hold On, I'm Coming," which contains what I consider the best songs she did from the early 1980s.

01 Freeway of Love (Aretha Franklin)
02 Who's Zoomin' Who (Aretha Franklin)
03 Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves (Eurythmics & Aretha Franklin)
04 Jimmy Lee (Aretha Franklin)
05 I Knew You Were Waiting [For Me] (Aretha Franklin & George Michael)
06 Jumpin' Jack Flash [Live] (Aretha Franklin)
07 You Are So Beautiful (Aretha Franklin & Billy Preston)
08 Shine (Aretha Franklin)
09 Please, Please, Please (James Brown & Aretha Franklin)
10 Oh Happy Day (Aretha Franklin & Mavis Staples)
11 He's the Boy (Aretha Franklin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15115163/ArethaF_1985-1989_FreewyofLove_atse.zip.html

The cover art is based on a 1985 photo.

Aretha Franklin - The Columbia Years, Volume 1 - Selected Best Tracks (1960-1963)

For most listeners, Franklin's career began in the year 1967. She signed to Atlantic Records, and she was immediately rewarded with some huge hits and critical acclaim, including the all-time classic song "Respect." But actually, her recording career began years earlier. She recorded for Columbia Records from 1960 to 1966. Unfortunately, they didn't know what to do with her. They knew she was a great talent, but they tried to push production and songs on her that didn't really fit her talents. They basically wanted her to be a mainstream Barbra Streisand type. Whereas Atlantic Records freed her to fully pursue soul music.

To this day, Franklin's pre-1967 material is mostly forgotten, even though Columbia Records has repackaged that material over and over in all sorts of different configurations. I didn't find any of their compilations satisfying, so I made one myself, which is here.

When I first posted this album in 2018, I listened to her Columbia material and picked out about 48 minutes of the songs I liked best. Then, in August 2021, a new Aretha Franklin box set called "Aretha" was released that covered her entire career. It included a few songs from her Columbia time period that I'd missed and that I had to admit were pretty good. That made me think that maybe I'd missed some others, so I went back to listened to her early stuff again. I did find more songs that I liked, enough to create two albums, which together add up to an hour and half of music.

As mentioned above, Columbia didn't give her the right material, though in the company's defense, apparently this was the musical direction she wanted to pursue at the time as well. That said, there are many songs that could easily fit on her late 1960s albums in terms of style and production. I tended to select those, while avoiding the many ballads with too much orchestration.

This album is 46 minutes long. Please don't forget to check out Volume 2. Here's the link for that:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/09/aretha-franklin-columbia-years-volume-2.html

01 Today I Sing the Blues (Aretha Franklin)
02 Maybe I'm a Fool (Aretha Franklin)
03 Won't Be Long (Aretha Franklin)
04 It Ain't Necessarily So (Aretha Franklin)
05 Are You Sure (Aretha Franklin)
06 Operation Heartbreak (Aretha Franklin)
07 Rough Lover (Aretha Franklin)
08 Blue Holiday (Aretha Franklin)
09 Hard Times [No One Knows Better than I] (Aretha Franklin)
10 Without the One You Love (Aretha Franklin)
11 How Deep Is the Ocean (Aretha Franklin)
12 I'm Sitting on Top of the World (Aretha Franklin)
13 Trouble in Mind (Aretha Franklin)
14 Ol' Man River (Aretha Franklin)
15 Skylark (Aretha Franklin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MjyqcQsB

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/y70Oe5yFy8ZNoSr/file

After splitting this album in two, I decided to make new album covers for both volumes. It seems there are few or no good color photos of Franklin from 1960 to 1963. However, I found a nice black and white promo photo that apparently dates to 1961. I colorized it. In March 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.