Brandon's Buzz

November kicks off with a bang, as country’s hottest-selling lass is back with her hotly-anticipated third album, which has her working with some eyebrow-raising collaborators. Dig in:

 

Pop music’s venerable Now series is back this week with a pair of new entries, as recent radio hits from A’s beloved Black Eyed Peas (their record-breaking number one smash “I Gotta Feeling”), Jordin Sparks (the terrific “Battlefield”), Katy Perry (“Waking Up in Vegas,” a guilty pleasure if I ever heard one), Michael Franti and Spearhead (their cheeky top 40 breakthrough “Say Hey (I Love You)”), and others punctuate Now That’s What I Call Music, Vol. 32; and a fascinating cross-section of unforgettable club smashes from the past three decades turn up on Now That’s What I Call Dance Classics!, including any number of one hit wonders from the likes of The Weather Girls (“It’s Raining Men,” with the amazing Martha Wash blowing the roof off the joint), CeCe Peniston (“Finally”), Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock (their oft-sampled touchstone “It Takes Two”), and others. This is all well and good, mind you, and will probably find its way into my collection, since I have a profound weakness for this kind of thing. But please don’t tell me I’m the only one who is shattered by the Now folks’ decision to omit Everything But the Girl’s legendary 1996 monster hit “Missing” from this tracklist. Gotta tell you, guys: Todd Terry’s brilliant decision to lay down a furiously insistent house beat just beneath Tracey Thorn’s abominably sexy croon made for what I call a dance classic every damn day o’ the week. Recognize.

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In a smashingly brilliant follow up to last year’s monumental ten-disc Classic Soft Rock collection — the infomercial promoting which was hosted by Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock (those peerless bastions of ’80s schmaltz who were better recognized by the masses as Air Supply) and was one of the finest, most compelling half-hours of television I have ever witnessed — the fabulous folks at Time-Life have truly outdone themselves with Ultimate Rock Ballads, a new eight-album assemblage of music which pulls together 133 of the most essential percussive dirges from the past four decades into one gloriously cheesy listening experience.

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