Summer Slow Jams VIII

Has it been a week already?  Don't know about you guys but this past week did not seem like it had all seven days.  And can you believe that this the eighth installment of Summer Slow Jams already?  Neither can I.  This time out we're listening to three compilations from The Right Stuff's Slow Jams series  If memory serves, it has been a while since we have featured any discs from the Slow Jams series which beat Rhino's Smooth Grooves to retail shelves by a year and a half.  Today's discs were late entries in the series, numbers 24, 25 and 28 respectively out of the series total of twenty-nine for those of you keeping track.

Released just a few weeks before the first Valentine's Day of the new Millennium, the ambitiously titled The Greatest Slow Jams features seventeen songs that had been featured on previous discs in the Slow Jams series as we'll see when I cover the nine main discs known as The Timeless Collection at a future date.  (Got ahead of myself in the ye olde post scheduling department.)  As far as the tracklist goes, I'm a fan of half of the songs though it bothers me that such obvious sad songs as "Misty Blue", "Sail On", "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart" and "Sideshow" are considered slow jams, a term I consider ultimately romantic.  Still, kicking off the disc with "Let's Get It On" and "Turn Off The Lights" makes no bones about the music's ultimate intention.

A concise ten song package particularly aimed at the lover in you.  There are no sad songs this time around though a few tracks from the disc above are also on third one.  Still, if you're short for time, you could do worse than programming tracks one, two and nine on repeat.  (If you're using Spotify playlist below, then it would be tracks one, two and eight as one song from the disc is not in Spotify library.)

For the penultimate disc in the Slow Jams series, released in April 2003, the compilers combed back through their previous work and assembled another tight ten tracklist.  The only song I regularly skip is Patti LaBelle's "If Only You Knew."  What is notable about this compilation is the inclusion of three really good covers; a Bread song, a Kris Kristofferson song and a Smoky Robinson song get the remake treatment.  If there isn't already a compilation of covers and interpretations by Al Green, I'm going to make one.*

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