Kemp, Tara

Tara Kemp | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 16, 1991)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Warner Bros / Wea
• ASIN: B000008H9E
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #53,218 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

TRACKS INCLUDE: 1. Prologue 0:57 2. Hold You Tight 4:44 3. Be My Lover 5:05 4. Too Much 4:59 5. One Love 4:38 6. Tara by the Way 4:03 7. Piece of my Heart 4:50 8. Together 5:06 9. The Way You Make Me Feel 4:21 10. Something to Groove to 2:49 11. Monday Love 5:03 12. Epilogue 1:07

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "Her name is Tara, by the way"!, February 10, 2003

By 

Eso (Oakdale) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kemp, Tara (Audio CD)

It was written in Billboard Magazine that Tara Kemp was said "to have the mass appeal of Paula Abdul". Just as Abdul was said to have crossover appeal, Kemp was able to scale the Pop and R&B charts with her gold-certified "Hold You Tight" and "Piece of My Heart" which also reached the Billboard Pop Top 10 and Billboard R & B Top 50. The album would only peak at number 109 on the entire Billboard Hot 200 albums even considering the astonishing success of the debut singles and Giant's attempts to make her a star.

If only they had chosen another toetapper and more upbeat number for the third single or had more aggressively promoted the actual third single "Too Much" which only reached #95, maybe the course of history would have been different.

In retrospect, it was lucky that in late '90 that Giant Records was able to negotiate a deal with Big Beat Records whereby they were able to cement a deal with Tara Kemp and acquire the rights to mass market her successful first underground/club hit single "Hold You Tight" on a much larger scale. As it happens the unfinished demo of "Hold You Tight" just sat on Tara's shelf until it was given life. When Tara arrived at Giant, Tara was thought by Billboard Magazine to be priority at the label as she was one of the first - if not the only female solo act - to be signed to Giant at the inception of its label in late '90/'91.

Hosh Gureli,who would later go on to work in promotion at ARISTA but who was then a D.J. at KMEL and who actually is heard introducing Tara to the San Francisco audience from KMEL on the cut "Tara, By The Way", was one of the people instrumental in breaking "Hold You Tight" to the mass audience. Another comparison between Abdul and Kemp is that Abdul's success with "Straight Up" arose in the same fashion: Kevin Weatherly and Keith Naftaly were the ones who broke that number in the Los Angeles area in the same fashion - but those are where the comparisons end.

Tara's voice is more supple and is clearly more vocally competent than Abdul. "Too Much" demonstrates her voice is clearly better than Abdul's. One of Kemp's gifts is her ability to enunciate yet still sound just as girlishly appealing as Abdul. Clearly, if you listen to Paula Abdul's "Rush, Rush" then to Tara's "Too Much" the difference is subtle but evident. That song was a fantastic tale of star-crossed lovers in a world where the ideal love is almost unattainable.

Even if some deem it to be a bit too repetitious, "Hold You Tight", our introduction to Kemp which reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Chart, was an example of sweet minimalism at its best which, incidentally, reflects the sort of leanings Madonna has on her last release "Music". Kemp's material was not the cheesy fluff which was very characteristic of some of the dance pop manufactured at the time. "Entertainment Weekly" made the mistake of thinking it was too generic and gave the album a "D" but failed to give the album its due that could only be achieved after a few listens.

Tracks such as the chugging "Together" where in a very inspired sonic move producers Tuhin Roy and Jake Smith engineered pleasing birdlike chirpings, the unremixed and more gritty original version of the second single offering the #7 Hot 100 Pop "Piece of My Heart" which recalls a decidely more old-school loop incorporating to great effect a more urban structure into dance pop which was a practice still in its infancy, and "One Love" with its skipping beats were fine examples of pleasurable dance music at its best.

Kemp would reemerge after parting ways with Giant Records - even after Giant was said to be working with Kemp on a sophomore album due for release in '92 sometime-in 1994 on Nerve Records with "Come Correct", a tantalizing offering that would have made more sumptuous had it been a prelude to a new studio album. Its beats were thick and the use of electronic loops and samples were superb examples and rendered the song a fine and far far better forerunner to the same sort of technique applied by producers of today's mass-produced more manufactured dance/pop from 'N Sync on "Bye Bye Bye". "Correct" brought to mind the best of her debut albums - namely the vibes of the more street cuts such "Together" and "Piece of My Heart" - and showed displayed a greater vocal ability. Hopefully, we will hear more from her in the future.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tara Kemp should have been a major player in 90s music, February 25, 2004

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kemp, Tara (Audio CD)

Here is an artist who should not have been a flash in the pan. Tara Kemp had hit singles with the tracks Hold You Tight and Piece of My Heart, producing a somehow full-sounding and emotional form of dance music that rose head and shoulders above most of the music being churned out in the early 1990s. She also proved herself a talented singer capable of expressing a tumble of emotions in intense ballads. This album was not perfect, sporting a couple of songs I consider complete duds, but there is more than enough talent here to make me question just how and why Tara Kemp did not enjoy a long and successful career.

Anyone who listened to pop radio in the early 1990s heard Kemp's signature songs Hold You Tight and Piece of My Heart; both tracks received a significant amount of air time and, if I am not mistaken, worked their way into the top ten singles chart. In my opinion, these were not even the best songs on her debut album, however. One Love combines the lyrics of a great love song alongside a strong but not overpowering beat. Be My Lover is a sexy little song borne upon the vocal winds of passion which pleases the ear despite a couple of stretches with a little too much funk thrown in. Too Much has a distinctly 90s pop sound to it, yet Tara's lyrics burrow deeply into the subjects of love and life, producing a passionate track with the emotional overtones of a love ballad. Together doesn't do much to distinguish itself, but it's certainly not a song you would consistently skip while listening to the CD. I really like The Way You Make Me Feel; Tara's voice really wows on the verses, but the repetitive chorus seems to hold the song back from becoming all it could be. Monday Love is an interesting track; it opens with Tara and the backup singers seemingly practicing the chorus before someone lays down the beat and starts the track up with full force; this song might make you want to dance, but the lyrics don't quite measure up to the intensity of the chorus.

I really do not care for two of the tracks on this album. Both of them barely even qualify as music in my opinion, as both are really just funky mixes of music with no singing whatsoever. While you may well be able to groove to Something to Groove To, the constantly repeated phrases "Her name is Tara, by the way" and "You liked it? I liked it" on Tara by the Way could drive a man mad if he listened to the song too often. Still, setting aside these two disappointing tracks, you are still left with eight songs (I am not including the short prologue and epilogue, which are really just musical pieces of Hold You Tight) that can touch your heart or make you want to dance or, more often that not, do both at the same time. It is unfortunate that Tara Kemp's too-short career has been all but forgotten now, as she was an artist who seemed to have what it takes to really make a name for herself.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay album that suffers from too many samples, June 7, 2005

By 

Preston (nc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kemp, Tara (Audio CD)

At this point, I'm sure that VH-1's wiseguy host is going to make wisecracking jokes on Tara Kemp and her short lived career on a future Where Are They Now show. But she made a decent debut in 1991. The album was know for its only two top 10 hits of Hold You Tight (which still gets played sometimes) and the infectiously funky Piece of My Heart. But while the rest of the album has some fun numbers, it suffers from an overreliance of samples on mostly every song. Save for that one nicely sung ballad on here, the rest of the album is a patchquilt of the new jack swing sound that dominated most of R&B and pop during '91. The drawback was that she came around the same time as Paula Abdul's album. And Mariah Carey and several other female artists were huge too. End result--more people decided to go for Paula or Mariah instead of Tara. I don't understand why Giant Records didn't bother to promote her career a little more or give her more exposure. But they had a huge year with Color Me Badd and the New Jack City soundtrack album--they were at their peak back then, but never got better than that. If there was more an emphasis on her singing talent than sample overkill and beats, this album would have performed better. And if this came out in the current era of American Idol, Simon Cowell would have butchered her singing big time! Just wasn't there at first, too much hesitance in the singing on most songs. This is more of a fun kind of album to listen to than something of substance.