Carpenters

When Karen Carpenter died on February 4, 1983 at the age of 32, more than one generation mourned. Karen and her brother, Richard, had achieved monumental success as purveyors of soft-rock soulfulness, aided by their wholesome, wistful looks…

Hurriedly put together in the wake of the success of the title song, and containing the follow-up hit "We've Only Just Begun," Close to You is a surprisingly strong album, and not just for those hits. Richard Carpenter's originals "Maybe It's You" and "Crescent Noon" are superb showcases for Karen Carpenter's developing talent, the latter a superbly atmospheric, hauntingly beautiful art song of the kind that Judy Collins was doing well at the time, and gorgeously arranged…

British EMI continues its "two on one" series of combining two vintage LPs on a single CD with a couple of Peggy Lee albums from two different eras. I'm a Woman, which Capitol Records released in February 1963, was a rush job. Lee was enjoying a hit single with the Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller-composed title song, which had been issued as a one-off single, in early 1963, so Capitol had her quickly cut an album's worth of tracks in order to have an LP of the same name out to take advantage commercially…

Modern Talking is one of the better-known outfits in European techno-pop, and on Alone the group delivers another batch of technologically advanced ditties…

Born Chantal Vanlee in Hasselt in 1965, Dana Winner found fame in the early '90s with Flemish cover versions of the Carpenters' "On Top of the World" ("Op Het Dak van de Wereld") and the Cats' "One Way Wind" ("Westenwind"). Guided by Belgian composer Jean Kluger, she released her debut album, Mijn Paradijs, in 1994 and went on to achieve success in South Africa and Germany at the end of the decade after recording material in various different languages…