Track Listing

1. Standing On The Inside
2. Love Will Keep Us Together
3. Solitaire
4. The Other Side Of Me
5. A Little Lovin
6. Lonely Night (Angel Face)
7. Brighton
8. (I'm A Song) Sing Me
9. Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
10. Laughter In The Rain
11. Cardboard California
12. Bad Blood
13. The Queen Of 1964
14. The Hungry Years
15. Betty Grable
16. Beautiful You
17. That's When The Music Takes Me
18. Our Last Song Together

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5677 in Music
• Released on: 1993-05-18
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .19 pounds
• Running time: 63 minutes

Customer Reviews

Best of the seventies
Neil had more success as a songwriter than as a singer but he was a good singer too, as this collection of his seventies music shows.

Laughter in the rain is perhaps the most famous song here and it is typical of the kind of song that Neil was so good at – a bouncy pop song that seems lightweight but has something enduring about it. Another famous song here is Solitaire, which provided a hit for both the Carpenters and Andy Williams. It has also been covered by a lot of other singers and is surely the most-covered song of those here. Love will keep us together and Lonely night were both superbly covered by Captain and Tennille who took them both to number one in America, though they didn't do much in Britain. Breaking up is hard to do is a re-recording of one of Neil's sixties classics, taken at a much slower pace than his earlier version. Bad blood was an American number one hit for Neil.

Of the other songs, The other side of me, A little loving, Sing me, The hungry years, That's when the music takes me and Our last song together are all wonderful songs, some of which you've probably heard via covers even if you haven't heard the originals.

Special mention must be made of the song Betty Grable, a tribute to one of Hollywood's all-time greats written soon after she died, and The queen of 1964, a song with a story to tell. They may be among the more obscure songs here, but they are worth hearing.

There are many Neil Sedaka compilations on the market. Some cover his whole career while others focus on particular periods. As a collection of his seventies music, this is as good as you are likely to find.

Heartless and poignant - it's all here
The cover may seem naff but this inexpensive CD is indeed the best single-disc 70s compilation of Sedaka you can get, with no misleading rerecordings (the reinvention of Breaking Up ... is hardly that).

I've long had a sneaking affection for Sedaka, even though he teeters on the verge of mawkishness. Betty Grable has some toecurling lyrics (by longtime collaborator Howard Greenfield) - "I'd eat some jam and bread / And watch her overhead" - and a bit of a gear-crunching key change, but the poignancy of that insistent, childlike melody is everything. (Love to hear Philip Goodhand-Tate or Joe Cocker wrap their gravelly tonsils around that.)

Other songs, like Laughter in the Rain, can be simply charming in capturing a moment though Queen of 1964, outrageous rhymes and all ("conquer" with "Bianca"), is as cheerfully heartless about the fate of its protagonist as Manilow's Copacabana - though funnier. It's entirely fitting that Our Last Song Together, Sedaka and Howard Greenfield's tender farewell to a collaboration which began in the 50s, closes the set.

Now if only there were a decent 50s CD which did more than recycle the hits - for the moment the expensive Bear Family box set seems the only way to go ...

Ah! The memories!
I had this on vinyl in the 70's and the songs are as good as ever. From upbeat to poignant such as The Hungry Years and The Other Side Of Me. For any " child of the 70's" this is a must have!