Customer Reviews

Let the Music Play: Best of

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Shannon's biggest hit, the one enduring song in her catalogue, is "Let The Music Play," one of the 1980s' most immortal dance songs. Finally, a greatest hits is issued and one can have these songs on CD...but the version of "Let The Music Play" included her is a severely edited version, not even the single version, which I used to have on a 45!! What on earth was the logic behind that? And yet we get the full length versions of her non-hits. What a bummer. Also missing is "It's Over Love," her late 1990s collaboration with Todd Terry which was a NUMBER ONE HIT on the dance charts. What were the people who put this together smoking????

I was so excited to see Shannon's Greatest hits, but was not to happy with the song selection. First of all, there are no remixes here to be found. Shannon had some of the best remixes of the eighties. You would think they would had at least put the remix of "Let the Music Play" on this collection. Secondly, The sound quality on the song "One Man" is awful. There's distortion threw out the song. I guess there was problems with the remastering of this track, but all the other songs sound excellent. and finally, there were many of her tracks omitted from this collection such as "Stop the Noise,"" Dancin'," "You Put a Spark in my Life," "It's Over Love" and "Believe in Me." It was nice to see some of her newer material here though. Over all, I am disappointed with this collection.

Shannon was one of my favorite artist from the 80s. Her strong vocal combined with the genius of Chris Barbosa and Mark Liggett production team made the Let the Music Play album timeless.

And just out of the blues, I found out that Shout Factory was releasing a best of album and I was excited. Well I bought the CD and I was bitterly disappointed. The sound quality is good but not excellent. They could have at least remastered it.

And also there was a MAJOR blunder. How did this album pass Quality Inspection?? One of my favorite energized songs "One Man" is not transfered correctly. There's an annoying noise flickering at 2.11 min

truth be told... Shannon was actually one of the top dance divas of the mid-1980's, she had hit after hit in the clubs, but after the dismal failure of her third album, "Love Goes All The Way", she quit music for a long while.

This set compiles all of her classic mid-1980's r&b singles, as well as a few latter-recordings. Making it the best Shannon collection on the market.

However, let's go to the negative points.
- As the cd clocks in at 68 minutes, there's still room... but yet ShoutFactory has included the severely edited version of Let The Music Play here, which cuts off an entire minute from the 45/single version. LTMP is Shannon's all time classic hit, the song everyone knows and loves by her... what is there to lose by adding that one extra minute to make the song the classic we love and remember it as? All of the other songs are complete.
- "Do Tha Wrong Thang". I don't know why this was included on here. It's an awful over-long track that has a few vocals by Shannon but is mostly a few rappers. The song has no tune or melody in the slightest and drags on and on and on....
- Outside of "Move Mania" (which was a UK top 10 hit), Shannon's more recent material has been very bland and formulaic. I would've loved some more album cuts from the first two classic albums over the forgettable La Bouche knockoff "It's Got To Be Love" and the in-one-ear, out-the-other dullness of "The Best Is Yet To Come"

However, since reissues of Let The Music Play and Do You Wanna Get Away are pretty much out of the question, this set is the most affordable and convienient way to get Shannon's classics on CD, even though "Move Mania" is the only post-1986 track worth a second listen here.

A great compilation of Shannon's. The only thing that would have made this complete would have been the addition of the song "Dancin". All in all, a disc worthy of purchase. I enjoyed it alot.

Finally, some of Shannon's great music make it to CD. Not only Give Me Tonight and Let the Music Play, but tracks from later releases. This is one of those albums that sounds better when you crank it up a little in your car, to drown out that lady on her cell phone in the car in the next lane. Her version of Urgent is frantic and wonderful. Do You Wanna Get Away is another explosive gem. Not given the props of her mid-80's contemporaries, which is funny considering she never had to lip sync (except perhaps on Solid Gold), in concert, like some of the other 80s Dance Gals. If there were an American Idol battle in the 80s, she would have been a contender!

I believe that a lot of these songs are forgetable to say the least, but other people might be bigger Shannon fans than I am. I'm actually giving this a low rating because the remastering on this wasn't very good. You can definitely tell on the song "One Man," which is very distorted at some points.

This CD is great because not only do you get her classic songs, but also hard to find later releases! If you luv Shannon and Jimi Tunnell (he sings on the first 6 tracks) you will luv this disk! Shannon is incredibly talented and hopefully this is only the best so far! Heres hoping she continues to record, and collaborate with the other original talented people from the past to create that magnificent and unique "Shannon sound"!

I never knew who she was in da 80's, all I knew was that, I loved her song "Let the music play" and I loved her voice. Well its safe to say that I will be buying all of her work. A+++