Track Listing

1. Caught In The Middle
2. Free Love
3. Tell Me
4. Life Goes Around
5. Someone Like You
6. Force Of Nature
7. Save It
8. Again
9. I Want You
10. September
11. Eyes Of A Child
12. Natural Thing

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #107830 in Music
• Released on: 1994-03-24
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Shining UK talent at its best
This is a stormer of an album by one of the best singers the UK has ever produced (as subjective as such comparisons are, I reckon only fellow Londoner Mica Paris can be said to eclipse her), and it's a shame it's now so hard to find. I don't know if that's purely down to the demise of the Cooltempo label, or because of the UK music industry's criminal inability, or unwillingness, to promote black talent (and here I refer the jury to Exhibit B: the brilliant Black Angel, by the aforementioned Ms Paris). Or maybe it's just that she never looked like Rihanna. Whatever.

Anyway, I digress. Juliet had already proved herself one of the country's most versatile and hardworking chanteuses, recording three albums with latin-jazz combo Working Week, by the time she put together this, her "pop" album, released in '94. It spawned four massive club AND mainstream chart hits: Free Love, the anthemic Caught In The Middle, I Want You and, surprisingly, even the downtempo Again. Clever remixing packages helped them become crossover hits and, if you listen carefully to some of the other tracks on the album, you'll be able to hear the replicated baselines and/or samples from classic tracks by Mantronix, Rose Royce and En Vogue, only they're so subtly incorporated that they don't detract from the identity of the songs at all.

The hits are all great: especially the David Morales edit of Free Love included here. It's basically a Dajae-style gospel stormer, but I always loved the ambiguity of the title - free love always having been, to my mind, an interesting philosophical concept ;o) and the production, even on this abridged version, just gets so dubby and - well, druggy - that it's quite intoxicating. I've even seen DJs drop an accepella mix of this song in clubs to devastating effect. The only singer of gospel I can think of with such dancefloor appeal is Kim English.

Some of the production on Natural Thing can sound a little dated now: I'm thinking especially of Someone Like You - which is nevertheless kind of redeemed by a great trumpet solo, and the Whitneyesque ballads September and Eyes Of A Child, on which Juliet starts warbling about `Great expectations, Timeless emotions...' and other such clichés.
Jazz-tinged Save It is reminiscent of earlier Working Week outings, and shows just what she can do vocally, while the album finishes with its title track, which is just a happy, uplifting song which sums up the way you'll be feeling by the end.

For a more contemplative jazz sound, you'll have to try to find her 2002 release Beneath The Surface, but this collection still kicks a*se!