Search - Sandra :: Paintings in Yellow

FANTASTIC

Larry Davis | 12/15/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The last great Sandra album in her style (the next was too un-Sandra-like). Truly, jems are hidden in here. Hiroshima, the ab fab title track, Johnny Wanna Live, basically all of them. 10 stars. A bonus track, the Extended Club mix of Hiroshima, is complete crap, sorry to say it. I so hoped it was an extended version, maybe clubbier, but I really don't think they could ever paly this mix anywhere. The original runs alone almost 7 minutes. Get this fantastic album, and look at those legs. When this album came out, in our store we made all the window to this album, with lots of vinyl cover and posters!"

BIG Sandra Cretu fan...really, now, what she needs is a BOXS

Larry Davis | NYC/Long Island, NY | 11/27/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Sandra Cretu, aka The Voice Of Enigma, holds a special place in my heart. She was the gateway for me into import world pop and dance music, and I've been there ever since. She was the first artist I would buy imports of, as the only US release was the 1989 compilation, on Virgin, "Everlasting Love"...and I've been a fan ever since!!! Her cover of that song, popularized in America by Robert Knight in 1967 and much more by Carl Carlton in 1976, is, in my opinion, the best-ever version of that song...mainly because there is a second verse and the cheese elements (on Gloria Estefan's cover for instance) are gone...just euphoric melody, vocals and production. Anyhoo, "Paintings In Yellow" was the first ACTUAL Sandra solo ALBUM I ever bought...aka not a compilation, and, to be honest, I had to get used to it because it was not as overtly POP or dancey, kinda mellow and dark, not what I expected at all, but I grew to love it and I still do...it aged very nicely, like fine wine and she looks DAMN good on the cover...my eyes popped out of my skull when I saw that cover of a sultry-looking Sandra, in bed, with a slip on...man, Michael Cretu probably thanks the gods, or whomever, everyday for a wife as beautiful as she is...



Anyhoo, the songs are great, it doesn't sound dated at all, and ballads like "One More Night" don't delve into cheeseball schmaltz territory at all, just pure and unaffected beauty..."Life May Be A Big Insanity" is a cool pop dance track with a catchy melody and good message, non-singles like "The Skin I'm In" and "Lovelight In Your Eyes" are catchy, danceable, dark-tinged gems with glorious Sandra vocals and Cretu production, and the epic "The Journey" with the title track make the album to be sort of a concept album. And the original take on "Johnny Wanna Live" is cool, with the dropped verse not used in the 1992 retake on her "18 Greatest Hits" comp, although that take's arrangement is better, in my opinion.



Now, the biggest curio here is the album's biggest hit "Hiroshima"...it's supposedly a cover of a Cretu song called "Wishful Thinking"...where's that song from and who did it originally??? Also, nobody mentioned it, but this song has a series of uncredited samples, especially on the bonus track remix at the end of the album!!! That high-pitched "a-a-a-a-a-a" throughout the song is that distinctive opening scream of KISS' 1984 hit "Heaven's On Fire", by Paul Stanley!!! I also heard Yes' "Leave It" and Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love"...I am shocked the Cretu camp never got sued by any of these artists!!! I hope these samples got cleared beforehand, but then again, this was in the early days of sampling, with the Beastie Boys' groundbreaking masterpiece "Paul's Boutique" out the year before in 1989, and samples costing a minimal amount, maybe they did get cleared, but no credits are listed anywhere...hmmmm???



Anyhoo, Sandra Cretu's solo work needs a BOXSET pronto (with CD placings of her classic 12" versions, both sides of her 1976 and 1984 singles "Andy Mein Freund" and "Japan Ist Weit (Big In Japan)", and Arabesque tunes (there were NINE Arabesque albums between the years 1978 and 1984 for chrissakes, all gems, 10 if you include the live EP))...I'm happy about the new album in January "The Art Of Love", the recent reimagination album "Reflections" and the single with DJ Bobo "Secrets Of Love". We should petition Virgin about getting a Sandra box out of them, could be 5 or 6 CDs at least...or maybe reissues/remasters of her catalogue with 12" versions as bonus tracks!!!!



Send me a message if this is a good idea...and how to get it to be done...K???"