Best of Bizarre

Seventeen-track anthology focuses mostly on their popular 1963-66 recordings, including "Deep Purple," "Whispering," "Stardust," "All Strung Out," several lower-charting items, and some LP tracks. They milked the "Deep Purple" formula too many times, but this is enjoyably frothy pop, and "All Strung Out" is a genuinely soulful, accurate approximation of Phil Spector's work with the Righteous Brothers. The disc also includes Stevens's 1959 solo single "Teach Me Tiger," a bizarre cover of "I Love How You Love Me" (with battling bagpipes and fuzzy guitars), and one undistinguished track each from 1985 and 1996.

Like fellow Aussies the Sherbs, Zoot never escaped teen-star status. But as Zoot Locker proves, they were certainly adapt at churning out clever pop tracks. Because of their time period, Zoot used every trick in the psychedelic book; but most songs maintain the three-minute mark, resulting in shrewd and skewered singles much like the Move delivered. Innocent innocuousness such as "Monty & Me" about walking the dog or "One Times Two Times Three Times Four" seems unfairly buried in the past. Of course, Beatles nods abound, such as the Lennon-isms of "Hey Pinky." With this smoking version of "Eleanor Rigby" the quartet attempted to jettison their early "pink" image, jumping aboard the bizarre "heavy covers" bandwagon with Vanilla Fudge and Rare Earth. The Hollies are another pervasive influence ("Flying" shares rhyme schemes with "Dear Eloise" over a "Helter Skelter" riff) while "Mr Songwriter" echoes the Byrds by way of Dylan. "Freak" foreshadows "Highway Star" and many Sweet moments.

In the summer of 1997, Puff Daddy took "I'll Be Missing You," a sappy reworking of "Every Breath You Take," to the top of the charts across the world; it became the biggest rap single in history. The success of "I'll Be Missing You" had the bizarre byproduct of making the Police hip again among both rock and rap artists. So, what better way to celebrate the occasion – as well as the 20th anniversary of the Police's first album – than to release another compilation, this time combining highlights from the Police and Sting's solo career? The Very Best of Sting & the Police does just that, combining 14 songs – not necessarily his biggest hits, either – in a seemingly random chronological order…

Remakes can be atrocious wastes of wax: subpar carbon copy re-treads dressed up as calculated idolatry, or deconstructionist reconfigurations basking in the laziness of lyrics already written. However, two of the greatest rewrites in history belong to Manfred Mann's Earth Band. The treatments of Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded By the Light" and "For You" included here create a wholly unique variation on the stark, earthy originals by flipping the tracks and exposing the soft, white underbelly, then piling on excessive musical ornamentation like a master filmmaker visualizing a novel, blowing the inspiration at the nucleus into a bowdlerized paronomasia of sonic perfection.

Emy Jackson (エミー・ジャクソン) was born in Essex, England as Emy Eaton. As a teenager in Yokohama she still couldn’t read Japanese well, but her ability to speak both English and Japanese fluently landed her a job as a youth DJ for the Good Hit Parade on Radio Kanto. In her notes to the excellent compilation Nippon Girls: Japanese Pop, Beat & Bossa Nova 1966-1970 Sheila Burgel writes: Her DJ career was cut short when her colleague Reiko Yukawa found Jackson singing “You Are My Sunshine” whilst strumming the guitar and sent word to A&R man Akira Izumi at Columbia Records. Akira insisted that Jackson break with the cover-pops tradition and tackle original songs written by Japanese songwriters in her native language of English.