Track Listing

1. La Vie En Rose - Grace Jones, Tom Moulton, Duke Williams, Arthur Stoppe, Jay Mark
2. I Need A Man - Grace Jones, Tom Moulton
3. Do Or Die - Grace Jones, Tom Moulton
4. Private Life - Alex Sadkin, Chris Blackwell, Grace Jones
5. Love Is The Drug - Alex Sadkin, Chris Blackwell, Grace Jones, Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, Barry Reynolds, Mikey Chung, Wally Badarou, Uziah Thompson
6. I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango) - Chris Blackwell, Grace Jones, Alex Sadkin, Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, Barry Reynolds, Mikey Chung, Wally Badarou, Uziah Thompson
7. Pull Up To The Bumper - Chris Blackwell, Grace Jones, Alex Sadkin, Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, Barry Reynolds, Mikey Chung, Wally Badarou, Uziah Thompson
8. Walking In The Rain - Chris Blackwell, Grace Jones, Alex Sadkin, Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, Barry Reynolds, Mikey Chung, Wally Badarou, Uziah Thompson
9. My Jamaican Guy - Chris Blackwell, Grace Jones, Alex Sadkin, Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, Barry Reynolds, Mikey Chung, Wally Badarou, Uziah Thompson
10. Slave To The Rhythm - Grace Jones, Stephen Lipson, Trevor Horn, J.J. Belle, S.J. Lipson, Bruce Woolley, The Little Beats, Frank Ricotti, John Thirkell, Guy Barker, Pete Beachill, Dave Bishop, David Snell, John McCarthy

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11152 in Music
• Published on: 1985
• Released on: 1989-05-24
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 56 minutes

Customer Reviews

The Best of Jones
Legendary for her looks, attitude and amazing talents. Grace Jones took the universe by storm in 1977 with her musical debut "Portfolio" which included her gold selling single "La Vie En Rose." After three disco albums she changed her image with a little help from her then-husband Jean Paul Goude. The first result came in 1980, titled "Warm Leatherette" and it was a hit. Finally, Grace got the acclaim that she so richly deserved. Her amazing covers hit right between the eyes, "Private Life" is a perfect odd couple tune that Grace mastered with full capability and her rendition of the Normals "Warm Leatherette" was something comepletely new. A great addition to this "Best of" CD is the "Thorngren Remix" of "Love Is the Drug" which has not been available elsewhere. Her perhaps biggest hit album came in 1981, titled "Nightclubbing." A compilation of various of covers, everything from David Bowie to Sting. Despite Grace's amazing talent as an inpreter, her own stuff was just as stunning, an example of this can be heard in her biggest chart success "Pull Up to the Bumper." The third Sly and Robbie collaboration arrived in 1983 dubbed "Living My Life," which turned out to be last collaboration bewteen the rhythm couple and Grace. This time around, Grace was fully involved with everything; writing and even eventually co-producing each song on the album. "Living My Life" stapled Grace as a fully grown-up star; "My Jamaican Guy" is closer to Reggae than any other of her previous work and the 7" single of "Living My Life" helped Grace to become the ultimate star of music videos. After three years of playing movie parts, Grace and Trevor Horn put together a biography titled "Slave to the Rhythm" which still sounds as freash as it did back then. Legendary for her looks, attitude and amazing talents.

Ladies & Gentlemen, Here's Grace...
As compilation albums go, this is a good offering. I'm not a big Grace Jones fan, and mainly bought this album for the two songs that bookend it - 'La Vie En Rose' and 'Slave To The Rhythm', two excellent songs. In between there is some vintage disco floor filler stuff, and the tongue-in-cheek 'Pull Up To The Bumper'. In summary, a worthy addition to any music collection

A skimpy collection
Island Life is a collection of Grace Jones' biggest hits on the Island records label. It draws from albums like Portfolio (1977), Fame (1978), Muse (1979), Warm Leatherette (1980), Nightclubbing (1981), Living My Life (1982) and Slave To The Rhythm (1985). The tracks are arranged chronologically so it maps out her musical development from the robotic disco sounds of La Vie En Rose through her new wave experiments with Private Life, her torch song phase in Libertango up to the funky R&B of My Jamaican Guy.

She wasn't taken seriously as a musician up until the release of Warm Leatherette in 1980, but I have always enjoyed her early disco work, especially the Portfolio album with its great tracks like Tomorrow, Send In The Clowns, I Need A Man and La Vie en Rose. The following two albums, Fame and Muse, were weaker but still contained a sprinkling of memorable disco musings like Autumn Leaves, Do Or Die and others.

Warm Leatherette really put her on the musical map, especially on account of her version of the title track that was an obscure synth-pop single by Daniel Miller's The Normal. She also did interesting versions of Private Life (The Pretenders) and Love Is The Drug (Roxy Music). Tracks 6 to 8 come from Jones' very successful Nightclubbing album. Libertango and Walking In the Rain are witty, accessible pop ballads while the funky Pull Up To The Bumper is controversially sensual. My Jamaican Guy from the innovative Living My Life album is jerky, funky and tribal with stunning vocal arrangements.

Unfortunately Island Life doesn't really succeed in providing the best of Grace Jones. It ought to properly have been a double disc as there are many other classics in her oeuvre that deserve to be on a best of album. Songs like Demolition Man, the title track from Nightclubbing, Rolling Stone, Art Groupie, Nipple To The Bottle and The Apple Stretching are equally worthy of inclusion on a greatest hits compilation. And then there are the great albums that followed her Island period: Bulletproof Heart and Inside Story, but that's another story!