Now This Is Music 10 (EVA, 1989)

Review
Spring 1989: Now This Is Music 10 released on double LP and single CD. Vinyl buyers get treated to the following: Poison – Every Rose Has Its Thorn, UB40 – Come Out To Play, Soul Sister – The Way To Your Heart, Rick Astley – Take Me To Your Heart, Four Tops – Loco In Acapulco, Paul Simpson featuring Adeva – Musical Freedom (Moving On Up).

11 of the album’s 18 tracks would also feature on contemporary UK compilations such as Now That’s What I Call Music 14 [Living In A Box, Neneh Cherry, Paula Abdul, Tone Loc, Inner City, Simple Minds, Roy Orbison, Marc Almond and Gene Pitney], Now That’s What I Call Music 15 [Roxette], Smash Hits Party ’89 [Milli Vanilli] and The Greatest Hits Of 1989 [The Reynolds Girls]. Meanwhile the extended mix of Soul II Soul’s Keep On Movin’ turned up on Now Dance ’89 – The 12″ Mixes. The glorious 7″ version can be found here.

Fruit At The Bottom was the second LP from the extremely talented Wendy and Lisa. Are You My Baby? is lifted from the album; the funky bass stretched to a full hot jam lasting 5:06. Elsewhere Womack and Womack [but never Bobby] drop some super homespun soul on Life’s Just A Ballgame while Monie Love cuts a furious beat on the jerky hip hop I Can Do This. Simple Minds and U2 are placed side by side; the latter’s Angel Of Harlem, an underrated classic with a killer horn reminiscent of Philly c.1974. More: Crowded House’s stark character study Into Temptation. Bleak but brilliant. And we end with a beat, a single note, the sound of a steel guitar – The Judds’ plaintive Why Not Me.

Favourite tracks
Soul II Soul – Keep On Movin’

U2 – Angel Of Harlem

Lest we forget
Crowded House – Into Temptation