Wednesday, 7 October 2015

Cliff Richard - 75 at 75


Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent compilation



The trouble with Cliff is that, desperately uncool as he may be, he has made some absolutely cracking records.  A lot of his early stuff especially is quite brilliant, and tracks like Move It, Batchelor Boy, Summer Holiday, Please Don't Tease and so on implanted themselves in my young, growing bones and have stayed there ever since.  Even later in his career when I found a lot of his output repellently schmaltzy (oh come on, you know what I mean – stop pretending you don't!) there were still some really good, well produced and well sung songs; I have always had a huge soft spot for Carrie, for example, and there are plenty of others which, uncool or not, I have always liked.

This is a great collection of the great, the decent and the frightful which to me makes up Cliff's career, and an excellent way to have a fine, comprehensive representative sample at a very reasonable price.  The sound quality is excellent (the remastering has been very well done) and it's a very good selection.  For me, the skip forward button needs to be on hand to avoid stuff like Daddy's Home, the endless succession of awful Christmas singles and so on, and if I hear Congratulations one more time I will not be responsible for my actions, but everyone will have their own likes and dislikes.  This is an excellent set spanning an extraordinary career and I can recommend it.

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