Customer Reviews

Paintings in Yellow

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The last great Sandra album in her style (the next was too un-Sandra-like). Truly, jems are hidden in here. Hiroshima, the ab fab title track, Johnny Wanna Live, basically all of them. 10 stars. A bonus track, the Extended Club mix of Hiroshima, is complete crap, sorry to say it. I so hoped it was an extended version, maybe clubbier, but I really don't think they could ever paly this mix anywhere. The original runs alone almost 7 minutes. Get this fantastic album, and look at those legs. When this album came out, in our store we made all the window to this album, with lots of vinyl cover and posters!

Sandra Cretu, aka The Voice Of Enigma, holds a special place in my heart. She was the gateway for me into import world pop and dance music, and I've been there ever since. She was the first artist I would buy imports of, as the only US release was the 1989 compilation, on Virgin, "Everlasting Love"...and I've been a fan ever since!!! Her cover of that song, popularized in America by Robert Knight in 1967 and much more by Carl Carlton in 1976, is, in my opinion, the best-ever version of that song...mainly because there is a second verse and the cheese elements (on Gloria Estefan's cover for instance) are gone...just euphoric melody, vocals and production. Anyhoo, "Paintings In Yellow" was the first ACTUAL Sandra solo ALBUM I ever bought...aka not a compilation, and, to be honest, I had to get used to it because it was not as overtly POP or dancey, kinda mellow and dark, not what I expected at all, but I grew to love it and I still do...it aged very nicely, like fine wine and she looks DAMN good on the cover...my eyes popped out of my skull when I saw that cover of a sultry-looking Sandra, in bed, with a slip on...man, Michael Cretu probably thanks the gods, or whomever, everyday for a wife as beautiful as she is...

Anyhoo, the songs are great, it doesn't sound dated at all, and ballads like "One More Night" don't delve into cheeseball schmaltz territory at all, just pure and unaffected beauty..."Life May Be A Big Insanity" is a cool pop dance track with a catchy melody and good message, non-singles like "The Skin I'm In" and "Lovelight In Your Eyes" are catchy, danceable, dark-tinged gems with glorious Sandra vocals and Cretu production, and the epic "The Journey" with the title track make the album to be sort of a concept album. And the original take on "Johnny Wanna Live" is cool, with the dropped verse not used in the 1992 retake on her "18 Greatest Hits" comp, although that take's arrangement is better, in my opinion.

Now, the biggest curio here is the album's biggest hit "Hiroshima"...it's supposedly a cover of a Cretu song called "Wishful Thinking"...where's that song from and who did it originally??? Also, nobody mentioned it, but this song has a series of uncredited samples, especially on the bonus track remix at the end of the album!!! That high-pitched "a-a-a-a-a-a" throughout the song is that distinctive opening scream of KISS' 1984 hit "Heaven's On Fire", by Paul Stanley!!! I also heard Yes' "Leave It" and Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love"...I am shocked the Cretu camp never got sued by any of these artists!!! I hope these samples got cleared beforehand, but then again, this was in the early days of sampling, with the Beastie Boys' groundbreaking masterpiece "Paul's Boutique" out the year before in 1989, and samples costing a minimal amount, maybe they did get cleared, but no credits are listed anywhere...hmmmm???

Anyhoo, Sandra Cretu's solo work needs a BOXSET pronto (with CD placings of her classic 12" versions, both sides of her 1976 and 1984 singles "Andy Mein Freund" and "Japan Ist Weit (Big In Japan)", and Arabesque tunes (there were NINE Arabesque albums between the years 1978 and 1984 for chrissakes, all gems, 10 if you include the live EP))...I'm happy about the new album in January "The Art Of Love", the recent reimagination album "Reflections" and the single with DJ Bobo "Secrets Of Love". We should petition Virgin about getting a Sandra box out of them, could be 5 or 6 CDs at least...or maybe reissues/remasters of her catalogue with 12" versions as bonus tracks!!!!

Send me a message if this is a good idea...and how to get it to be done...K???

I'm a big fan of Sandra, I love all of her CD's. She just has a great music for me, never get bored with it.

Sandra "Paintings in Yellow"

Ok, if you have sat through Sandra's first three albums, things are now starting to come together, and this one is the best yet. Something of a turning point in her career (not commercially, as it was not markedly more or less successful than the releases before it), it features a finale suite of three songs that make a kind of mini project by themselves - an early example of producer Michael Cretu's grand ideas, that were fully realised in the later "Enigma" project. Luckily, this is no mere dummy run, because "Paintings in Yellow" is a very well produced and musically sound album. The opening track "Hiroshima" is almost too serious for Sandra's trademark breathiness, but she pulls it off, and her singing performance throughout the track is refreshingly strong. Track 2 is an immediate let down, as it falls into horrible pseudo break-dance territory, but things perk up again with "Johnny Wanna Live", which is something of a fan favourite, an anti-fur trade song that is surprisingly touching.

Later on the CD comes "One More Night", which forms the customary soft ballad of the collection, and it's one of the best Sandra songs in this style since "Little Girl". But the album reaches it's full potential in the final medley, which I have already mentioned. A mini-epic of three songs blended together, it's full or crashing production and energy that occasionally and suddenly drops into delicate softness with great style, and Sandra's vocals are the most effective I have heard them. She's still over-treated and too nasal, but there's a good connection between her range and this new material that finally works perfectly. That makes this the best of Sandra's first four albums. It also has a great cover - that in itself shows the new, grown up look she was taking. What came next was the continuation of a new direction.

Unlike some other listeners who discovered or knew Sandra's material first and then her affiliation with the new age,ambient band Enigma, it was the reverse for me;First Enigma, then Sandra...She was never given any American promo or exposure from Virgin Records and remained only popular in the 80's elsewhere around the globe.

This release appeared the same year(1990) as Enigma's MCMXC a.D. album;Actually, months before the Enigma project had launched. There are obvious trace sound and musical elements and themes (the track "The Journey" being the strongest) to resemble what Sandra's husband Cretu would utilize or morph into the Enigma project. By this time, Sandra had already moved from Germany and was living in Spain for two years while recording music on the island of Ibiza through the use of her husband's state-of-the-art A.R.T. Studios set up.Producer-husband Michael Cretu spared no expense and used the most polished and sophisticated synthesizer and electronic recording equipment and techniques (at the time); It shows! The results on this album display the more introspective and mature signature sound that Sandra was undergoing; Gone were the outdated harsh electronic synth machinations,pop-dance and teen subject matters from the 80's that had catapulted her into international stardom (from her days with the female Euro group Arabesque to her solo debut in 1985 to 1988 period).Paintings in Yellow illustrates a more warm approach to the music.A few themes centered on the Hiroshima bomb victims (Hiroshima re-make originally recorded in the 70's by Wishful Thinking) as well as animal cruelty and animal rights activist global issues with the track Johnny Wanna Live; A track that I had originally misinterpreted and thought it was about some teen age angst issue a la Rebel Without A Cause---maybe a teen involved with drugs or alcohol issues.Johnny Wanna Live would later be covered by British pop-opera vocalist Sarah Brightman(though, Sarah's version is approached in a more minimalist and slower tempoed nature---I prefer the original version by Sandra). Other highlights include the smooth blend of R&B,dance pop elements on Lovelight In Your Eyes.This track almost has an early Janet Jackson vibe or feel---it is comprised of catchy hooks ,toe tappin' material with a sweet bass line.It remains one of my more favorite tracks on the album as well as a non-record charting hit by Sandra;It's a hidden gem or sleeper hit that got away!"One More Night" is pure romantic balladry which also demonstrates the pre-Enigma sound;It's fantastic.The album climaxes to the five part song suite entitled "The Journey"---this one is a sure and sheer segue into the band project Enigma that Sandra would join with,then hubby, Michael Cretu and Frank Peterson. The Journey is moody,stark,serious,somber---very much in contrast with the previous songs on the album!

Paintings In Yellow marks a whole new and different artistic direction and thought provoking territory for this French-German pop singer.Her voice to many will have that distinctive 80's almost-nasal pop sound---but it is a charming voice nevertheless (think Paula Abdul or any other pop singer of that era). However, Sandra's vocal ability lies in her seductive and I'll even say sexy, fawning,breathy European quality! Once you hear her voice, then,and only then, will you recognize that it's the nature and character that captivates and not whether she can hit those notes like an opera singer (she can't). The music style is creatively produced to fit and suit her vocal ability---even enhances it!

Hiroshima and Johnny wanna Live are classics, I had the chance to pick this up and after having seen the videos already then I figured it would be worth it.

These songs have messages and meanings that are lovely and profound. Since Arabesque and Enigma, the production quality keeps getting better, I could tell for myself how much better than before in some songs by the Arabesque, although I love their work together as a team in Arabesque, the work without the other two singers is just as poetic and brilliant as the rest if not more than that. I value this work highly. Recommend.

Aryan Somers

Sandra appeared on the music scene in europe in 1985 with the debut single "maria magdalena" which i heard for the first time in Austria that year.Through her career she had a serie of chart topping hits like "in the heat of the night" and "hiroshima" her husband micheal cretu who had produced all of albums so far is better known for the group enigma in 1991 with the single"sadness"which was an international hit sandra does appear in all enigma tracks but in the last she took a break.Well there are other projects in the pipe line if it's sandra or enigma i hope soon sandra will release another album.To end of this review i would like to wish the best of luck to sandra and her husband micheal cretu they had put the magic in music.even myself i'm a songwritter i would mind to write some pieces for them not for fame but the pleasure of music and studio recording i like most.

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I have this album, and I like just one song:
"Johnny Wanna Live".

It's her WORST album!

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