Commercial Dance : Pop Songs

The initial Polydor Abba CDs released in 1982 were only available in territories where PolyGram had the Abba licence but this was to change in 1983 as Polar entered the CD market. In reality, Polar’s entry into the CD market masked a simple case of outsourcing as PolyGram were simply asked to press up copies of their Abba titles with Polar catalogue numbers and packaging. While PolyGram would continue to supply their local markets with red coated Polydor CDs, Abba’s other European licencees would be sent the ‘Polar’ CDs.

A British dance-pop group which found fame thanks to the antics of androgynous frontman Pete Burns, Dead or Alive formed in Liverpool in 1980. Burns first surfaced three years prior in the Mystery Girls, later heading the proto-goth rockers Nightmares in Wax; he founded Dead or Alive with keyboardist Marty Healey, guitarist Mitch, bassist Sue James, and drummer Joe Musker, debuting in 1980 with the Ian Broudie-produced Doors soundalike "I'm Falling." "Number Eleven" followed, but just as the group was gaining momentum, they were swept aside by the emergence of the New Romantic movement, with Burns subsequently charging that fellow androgyne Boy George of Culture Club had merely stolen his outrageous image.

It's hard to believe it now, given her complete retreat back into obscurity, but in the mid-'90s Scottish soul-pop vocalist Dina Carroll was one of the biggest pop stars in the U.K. Unfortunately, due to various record company wranglings, her career has undeservedly gone the same way of fellow Brit winners Shola Ama, Des'ree, and Sonique. She hasn't really been heard in the subsequent decade at all, bar a contribution to the Bridget Jones soundtrack, and this 2001 collection, her first and only official album to compile the biggest hits from her career in the 2000s. All six singles appear from her 1993 debut So Close, whose mixture of soul-pop, power ballads, and commercial dance pop earned her comparisons with Mariah, Whitney, and Janet. The epic "Don't Be a Stranger" remains her signature tune, but the C+C Music Factory-produced "Special Kind of Love," the smooth disco-pop of debut solo hit "Ain't No Man," and the jazz-funk of "Express" proved she was more than just a big-voiced balladeer.

Anti existed as an album cycle before it existed as an album – arguably long before Rihanna knew what form her eighth album would take, either. Work on Anti began in the autumn of 2014 and proceeded in semi-public, progress being measured in Instagram posts and tweets, along with intermittent singles, each released to white-hot anticipation but none metamorphosing into massive hits. When Anti finally appeared in January 2016 – three years after Unapologetic and months later than expected – it bore none of these 2015 singles, a move that suggests a tacit acknowledgment that neither the curiously muted Kanye West and Paul McCartney collaboration "FourFiveSeconds" nor the unrestrained roar of "Bitch Better Have My Money" functioned as appropriate anchors for the album.

Anti existed as an album cycle before it existed as an album – arguably long before Rihanna knew what form her eighth album would take, either. Work on Anti began in the autumn of 2014 and proceeded in semi-public, progress being measured in Instagram posts and tweets, along with intermittent singles, each released to white-hot anticipation but none metamorphosing into massive hits. When Anti finally appeared in January 2016 – three years after Unapologetic and months later than expected – it bore none of these 2015 singles, a move that suggests a tacit acknowledgment that neither the curiously muted Kanye West and Paul McCartney collaboration "FourFiveSeconds" nor the unrestrained roar of "Bitch Better Have My Money" functioned as appropriate anchors for the album.