Alexander o Neil Hearsay

Alexander O'Neal almost achieved the breakout he needed for crossover success with his second album. It cracked the Top 30 on the pop album chart, earned a gold record, and included O'Neal's two strongest uptempo tunes, "Fake" and "Criticize." Jam and Lewis linked the material with "party" dialogue and patter, providing their finest and tightest production for any O'Neal record. The beats were catchy, the songs hook-laden, and O'Neal's voice alternately explosive, sensitive and bemused.

Alexander O'Neal almost achieved the breakout he needed for crossover success with his second album. It cracked the Top 30 on the pop album chart, earned a gold record, and included O'Neal's two strongest uptempo tunes, "Fake" and "Criticize." Jam and Lewis linked the material with "party" dialogue and patter, providing their finest and tightest production for any O'Neal record. The beats were catchy, the songs hook-laden, and O'Neal's voice alternately explosive, sensitive and bemused. This 2 CD set, packaged in a sumptuous casebound book, contains the lyrics and newly-authored liner notes by A. Scott Galloway, and features additional remixes and alternate versions of the singles.

Hearsay - All Mixed Up (also known as All Mixed Up') is a remix album consisting of songs performed by American recording artist Alexander O'Neal. It was originally released in 1988, by Tabu and Epic. It collects together single remixes of tracks taken from O'Neal's critically and commercially successful 1987 album Hearsay. CD and cassette releases contain bonus tracks featuring contemporary remixes of songs from the earlier Alexander O'Neal album.

Following the success of the Tabu individual expanded editions, we have subsequently received enquiries about putting some packages together on Alexander O’Neal and The S.O.S. Band which encompass all of the original albums together with the 7” versions of the singles plus some of the 12” mixes we were unable to feature on the individual expanded editions. So who better to curate these packages than Ralph Tee, curator of the Philadelphia International Box Set and all-round Soul Music expert. So here are all 6 of Alexander O’Neal’s original Tabu albums as they were originally released together with 2 bonus CDs, one of which contains of all the key 7” singles and the other which contains the 12” versions which were not included on the recent expanded editions.

Some of the advantages that 2004's Greatest Hits has over 1995's The Best of Alexander O'Neal are apparent from the quickest of glances. The most obvious difference is the quantity of songs: while The Best of Alexander O'Neal functioned as a suitable introduction covering the singer's first three albums, this disc features five more sensibly picked cuts. The most important inclusion here, beyond all the essential chart hits ("If You Were Here Tonight," "Criticize," "Fake," "Never Knew Love Like This," "All True Man," "What Is This Thing Called Love?"), is "Saturday Love," the magnificent 1986 single previously bound to duet partner Cherrelle's catalog. Alexander O'Neal (1985), Hearsay (1986), and All True Man (1991) are all worth owning, but this compilation will do for those on a budget.