CD THREE leads off with indie rock kings The Smiths and their song "Panic" followed by four electronic shenanigans from Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Paul Hardcastle, and New Order. The latter's "Bizarre Love Triangle" never gets old though the single edit feels more like an appetizer than a meal. The re-recording of "Pretty In Pink", for the film soundtrack of the same title, precedes Simple Minds and their third single from Once Upon a Time. Talk Talk slides in at track 8 with "Life Is What You Make It" and you can't escape it or the next few experimental, artsy-sounding tracks. "Rise" continues to amaze with each listen which is saying a lot for anything the naturally abrasive John Lydon is involved with. The following run of five tracks features the second appearance of a-ha on the album. The fade-in of "(Forever) Live and Die" triggers the same joy it always has. CD THREE has been my favorite disc thus far.
The expectations for CD FOUR are low. The fourth discs in this series are usually the junk drawers of the sets: a catch-all for all the tracks that somehow didn't find a home on the first three discs. A quick glance at the tracklisting shows all but five of the disc's twenty tracks were hits on the US charts so it's not such a hodgepodge this time around. The opening track, the Number One song of 1986 in the UK, has kinda been our song since we first heard it in Top Gun nearly forty years ago so it always lands just right. And I have a long, tangled relationship with the Slippery When Wet album so "Living On A Prayer" has always been near and dear. Europe's "The Final Countdown" has a grating synth hook that has always made the song more annoying than inspiring and overall I would tend to skip more than a few of the songs on this disc. Tracks I would never skip include "Broken Wings" and "Higher Love" though I prefer the full-length album versions of both. The disc ends with two more cover versions and the concept of NOW That's What I Call Covers crosses my mind as does the fact that the majority of the songs on this album are available in longer versions, either on their original albums or as remixes or extended versions.
NOW Yearbook '86 has many familiar-to-me songs as many of them have remained favorites since I first heard them. My observations for an alternate compilation of longer versions of the songs superseded my usual musings of a U.S. chart-based compilation this time around.
The three-disc 60-song NOW Yearbook EXTRA '86 was released on April 7, 2023. The album features many returning artists from NOW Yearbook '86 and features a single Number One song, Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" from 1969, as the final song on CD THREE. (After a sound-alike version of the song was featured in a 1986 Levi's commercial, Gaye's version was re-released and re-charted, peaking at #8.)
The Housemartins, The Smiths, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Falco, and Culture Club are among the artists returning from NOW Yearbook '86 for CD THREE of the follow-up. New Order also shows up for an encore with "Shellshock", one of my favorite tracks by the band. Other favorite tracks include Dead Or Alive's "Brand New Lover", Sly Fox's "Let's Go All The Way" and Jellybean's "Sidewalk Talk", originally released in 1984. After the disc finished playing, I still wanted more so I pulled up Paul English's Now Yearbook Extra Plus 1986 playlist on Spotify to scratch that itch.
1986 was the last year I felt I had my finger firmly on the pulse of new music though my interest was more rock than pop. I'd become a husband and a father in 1987 and music took a backseat for a while. These two NOW Yearbook collections brought back many good memories but left me wanting more songs and specific artists from a year I know well.
No comments:
Post a Comment