Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Tribute To MadonnaA Tribute To Madonna: Virgin Voices
Virgin Voices is one of the best tribute albums I've ever heard. I happened to come across it when I was doing a Madonna search on Spotify.

All of the tracks are more than decent (well except for the dreadful and very odd cover of "Material Girl"), but the incredibly impressive ones include: Dead or Alive's take on "Why's It So Hard," Heaven 17's "Holiday," Annabella Lwin's "Like A Virgin" and Flock of Seagull's "This Used To Be My Playground."

Atralasia's version of "Vogue" is intriguing vocally, but the tempo has been intensified to the point that it sounds almost cartoon-like, a sound that also shows up on "Bad Girl" (James Hardway with Amanda Ghost.)

Front Line Assembly's "Justify My Love" actually improves on the original, sounding more sultry than sleazy. "Open Your Heart" by Ofra Haza has an opera quality to it and is very beautiful. I could go on and on about the rest of the album (on two discs) but it's so awesome you need to discover it for yourself!

Another Madonna tribute album that's not half bad is by The Popettes. Instead of a variety of artists, it's just one and while the Popettes take few creative liberties and stay almost 100% faithful to the original versions, Tribute to Madonna is still worth a listen.

Of particular note is the Popettes' take on "Miles Away;" it's actually better than Madonna's.

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