Joan Armatrading Joan Armatrading

This is the way a Joan Armatrading best-of collection should be assembled in the first place. The numerous single-disc compilations never came close to being representative of her achievement as a recording artist. Culling 43 tracks over eight years and 11 albums is even better in many ways than issuing an Armatrading box set. All of the expected material from the early years is included on disc one, such as "Cool Blue Stole My Heart," "Travel So Far," "Dry Land," "Down to Zero," "Love and Affection," "Help Yourself," "Woncha Come on Home," "Show Some Emotion," "Willow," "Barefoot and Pregnant," "Bottom to the Top," "You Rope You Tie Me," "Your Letter," and many more, including "The Flight of the Wild Geese" from the soundtrack to the film. It covers Armatrading's prolific period from 1975-1979, where a lot of old hippies, now upwardly mobile professionals seeking mellow escapes from their relentless and often ruthless pursuit of "the good life," got off the bus and remained stuck, listening only to her early records along with those of the Jacksons, Eagles, and James Taylor.

When an artist releases something as profoundly moving as Lovers Speak, critical acumen doesn't mean a damned thing. Joan Armatrading's first album proper in five years is a startling testament of artistic integrity, searing emotional honesty, and musical accessibility and sophistication that is literally unmatched by anything on the current musical scene. In fact, the only comparable album from 2003 is Annie Lennox's Bare. But where the latter is an album of confessions and exorcism, Lovers Speak is an unflinching look at the language of love from all sides. It is an investigation into the experience of love, its languishing and loss, and the redemption it is capable of rewarding to those who persevere and refine themselves through heartache and acceptance and tolerance.

Joan is a 3 times Grammy Nominated Singer / Songwriter. Consequences, Joan Armatrading’s new album, is one of her most intimate and direct albums yet and one that wears its conscience and its heart on its sleeve. Released via BMG, and her 22nd studio album to date, it ably illustrates the fact that Joan Armatrading never likes to repeat herself. It is a very different follow up to 2018’s Top 30 hit album Not Too Far Away.

This compilation of Joan Armatrading's best moments has all of the indisputable singles on it, but some of those choices, as to whether they were the very best of an artist who has always been more favored than understood is open to debate. Nonetheless, these 14 tracks do provide a fine introduction to Armatrading, who has slipped from the cultural radar screen – at least in America – since before the turn of the century. Along with obvious choices like "Love and Affection" (though it is a 1991 remix), "Down to Zero," "Drop the Pilot," "Show Some Emotion," "Willow," "Rosie," "The Weakness in Me," "All the Way From America," "More Than One Kind of Love" from 1990, and, of course, from 1983, "(I Love When You) Call Me Names," from the terminally misunderstood album The Key, produced by Steve Lillywhite.