Third re-up. Time has passed since I posted it the first time. Now I consider it is one of the best Melanie albums of her career. Except for the last two songs, this offer is gorgeous and is among her best. So I encourage anybody to catch it (here) and any label to release it one day on a correct format.
This album is another missed chance for Melanie in her attempt to come back since there was in it all she needed to show that she was a great artist, scandalously underrated. This was her 4th attempt for a comeback after Photograph in 1976, Phonogenic in 1978 and Ballroom Streets in 1979, and she must have thought that she was damned not to succeed in finding the way to a larger public that her small following, when she had been one of the biggest selling singers between 1969 and 1972. But the wheel had turned. And I can understand that in 1982, the world was not really ready to consider this record, consisting of a large mix of different styles, most of them belonging to the past, as excitating as she would have hoped. Listening to it now, it's easy to see that it was a great injustice, but I'm not sure that at the time I would have been interested at all. And the cover was like murdering it definitively, with a picture from apparently the same photo session than the one on Phonogenic, not a problem if the picture was good, but honestly, with her hat and her feathers around the neck, Melanie looks terrible. That's the reason I decided to do a fake cover with a picture taken also in 1978 by Dan Littlejohn, a professional photographer, but more in line with the content and the title (and with some "ressemblance" with the cover of Sin of Pride of the Undertones). So here it is, another album that never beneficiated of a decent CD edition (although released by RCA at the time, not an independant label). Among the 11 songs, 5 are reprises, but the best comes from the songs Melanie wrote. In particular, the thrilling "Love You To Loath Me" (and not "Love You To Love Me" as it is stated on certain sites), one of the most sentimentally incorrect songs of all the times, but actually the kinds Edith Piaf and Billie Holiday had sung in their times. Only that it is not usual to hear a woman sings such things since the 60's. This is the song I put in streaming below. In the file, you'll find all the lyrics I collected for you. One of my other fave is the apparently funny "When You're Dead And Gone" but the text is really depressing actually. But most of it is at least good, sometimes great. Have a good time in listening to these Arabesque songs.
Love You To Loath Me. The way you mistreat me, you torture and beat me Well it doesn�t even make me blue �Cause it�s truer than strange and stranger than true I just love you to loathe me like you do The human condition, we honour the victim So being a martyr does even make me blue �Cause it�s truer than strange and stranger than true I just love you to loathe me, oo-oo-oo I just love you to loathe me like you do The way you despise me, insult and criticise me Ah each new insult gives me something new �Cause it�s truer than strange and stranger than true I just love you to loathe me oo-ah-ah I just love you to loathe me like you do
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