Tanita Tikaram

Tanita Tikaram

“The WEA / East West Albums 1988 – 1995”

(5 CD, Cherry Red Records, 2024)

What a year, 1988. Setting aside the lingering wave of Suzanne Vega's second album "Solitude Standing", released in 1987, and the contemporaneous debut of Sinéad O'Connor, "The Lion And The Cobra", it was in fact the year of k.d. lang's "Shadowland", of Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians' "Shooting Rubberbands At The Stars" (who could forget "What I Am"?), but also of Toni Childs' "Union" (with the hit "Don't Walk Away") and of firebrand Michelle Shocked's "Short Sharp Shocked".

And yet, the two singer-songwriters who truly went on to conquer the mainstream on a massive scale, worming their way into homes and stereo systems of the most unlikely listeners, from philosophy students to housewives in the sticks, were both aces up Warner's sleeve: American Tracy Chapman, with her sensational self-titled debut, and Tanita Tikaram, a shy, sullen young woman of exotic allure, born in Münster, Germany, but raised in Basingstoke, England, with her first record "Ancient Heart". Both possessed deep, almost masculine voices, instantly recognisable, an intimate style far removed from the synth-pop steroids of the decade, and a compositional gift that went straight to the point — songs about life, imbued with a peculiar vision of love and steeped in existential questions — and both enjoyed extraordinary fortune in that 1988 (and the following year, given over to promotion and touring).

Tanita was the classic bolt from the blue that nobody had seen coming, yet she managed to win over the hearts and ears of many (combined sales of "Ancient Heart" and its follow-up "The Sweet Keeper" come close to six million copies), helped along by wall-to-wall promotion that in Italy even included the Sanremo Festival — an international guest for three consecutive editions: in 1989 at the PalaBarilla with "Twist In My Sobriety", shortly after Francesco Salvi's performance of "Esatto" (what times those were!), in 1990 at Sanremo International with the just-released "We Almost Got It Together", and the following year with "Only The Ones We Love" — as well as the Festivalbar (in 1989, at the Verona Arena, she mimed "Good Tradition" and "Twist in My Sobriety" and was handed a platinum disc by Gerry Scotti for 200,000 copies sold in Italy in under a year, and she also took part the following year with "Sunset's Arrived"). It's also telling of just how different mainstream music programmes and big televised showcases were back then, catering to teen idols (Rick Astley, Nick Kamen), melodic pop and beach-holiday choruses, yet still able to launch names a touch more complex, refined and out of the ordinary (we recall Peter Hammill as a guest on Discoring with "Just Good Friends" in 1984, or Bjork introduced on the Festivalbar stage by Vittorio Salvetti, and R.E.M. and Seal as guests of Maurizio Seymandi...).

An almost baritone voice, cryptic lyrics steeped in literary references from Charles Dickens to Virginia Woolf, and a musical style that — aside from the odd dated keyboard flourish betraying its age — has kept its charm intact, conjuring dreamlike, if dark (and, according to no shortage of detractors even back then, downright depressing) atmospheres, until something finally went irreversibly wrong and relegated the now 55-year-old singer-songwriter to cult-artist status.

The arrival of the box set "The Wea/East West Albums 1988-1995" is a golden opportunity to revisit the first seven years of Tikaram's career with a critical eye, filling in gaps and reassessing records that passed by too quietly the first time round. It also invites us to examine a phenomenon that is hardly unique in the history of the music business — something very similar later happened to David Gray, a chart-topping smash with "White Ladder" before gradually being forgotten by the networks, and to Dido, who went from ten million copies of "Life For Rent" to little more than a million for "Safe Trip Home": audiences are fickle, and they'll abandon you whether you make records too similar to one another or stray too far from the style that defines you in the public imagination (and within a few short years Tanita managed to commit both cardinal sins) — but in her case it leaves a particularly bitter aftertaste.

Yes, because doing the maths, in just two years the singer-songwriter went from having a second album reach number three in the UK charts to releasing a fourth that couldn't spot the UK Chart even with binoculars. We're not talking about a niche artist recording for an indie label, but someone who had become "big" in an extremely short time, with a (perhaps overly) frantic release schedule and top-shelf collaborations — besides "The Sweet Keeper", 1990 was also the year she featured on Mark Isham's self-titled album with "I Never Will Know" and "Blue Moon", and covered the King of Rock's "Loving You" for NME's tribute album "The Last Temptation Of Elvis" (and if you look at the cover, Tanita Tikaram doesn't just get her name spelled out in full, she's pictured right alongside Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen!). And in that same 1990, back home she was even the subject of a parody by the duo French and Saunders, which poked fun at some of her trademarks (the perpetual pout, the habit of closing her eyes while singing live with guitar in hand, and her struggles to explain the meaning of her own lyrics).

Cherry Red is by now a guarantee of quality when it comes to box sets devoted to artists and bands with a small but devoted following who have never before had their catalogue given a proper, large-scale dusting-off — among the label's most recent releases we recall those dedicated to Kissing The Pink and to Dream Academy, who could nonetheless boast production work by a giant like David Gilmour. Not that this Tikaram box lacks big names, quite the opposite. It's remarkable that, right from her debut, a nineteen-year-old girl who, having just left school, was heading for a career selling advertising space, had at her service Rod Argent of the Zombies, session player Peter Van Hooke known for his work with Van Morrison and Mike and the Mechanics, the aforementioned Mark Isham, Marc Ribot — whom Tanita had admired on Tom Waits's "Rain Dogs" — and violinist Helen O'Hara, formerly of Dexys Midnight Runners.

The five albums from "Ancient Heart" to "Lovers In The City" have been remastered by Simon Murphy, who hasn't tampered too much with the original sound, simply making it "fuller" and better balanced on records like "Everybody's Angel" and "Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness"; since these are works assembled from content licensed from other labels, it's often easy to stumble upon songs sourced from questionable materials (some will recall the scandal of Robert Palmer reissues made from MP3 files, or slapdash transfers from crackly vinyl for bonus tracks), but in this case the work done has been excellent.

Not only have Warner and Cherry Red done their homework, but the booklet also contains a track-by-track commentary by Tanita herself, recounting memories and emotions and sternly calling out youthful excesses and stylistic choices that didn't pan out (overly convoluted lyrics, "marmite-y" vocal performances, occasionally less inspired music). The whole package is available at a price that's not exactly cheap but not excessive either, which lets even the curious listener — not just the devotee who's been waiting ages for a proper polish of the catalogue — approach it and pick up listening where they left off (in the vast majority of cases, right after the successful "Ancient Heart" and "The Sweet Keeper"). The five CDs come in cardboard sleeves, and the outer box is elegant and sturdy enough — unlike certain cut-price major-label operations of ten or twenty years ago, which often reissued albums without bonus tracks and in pre-remaster editions.

As we said: a golden opportunity to rediscover a career that fell into obscurity far too quickly. "Ancient Heart" has been the only Tanita Tikaram album to receive a recent reissue, in 2018, to mark its thirtieth anniversary (on white vinyl, courtesy of Music on Vinyl, and on CD with two bonus tracks — "Friends" and, inexplicably, "I Love The Heaven's Solo", which actually belongs to the singer's third album, released in 1991, and had already appeared in an earlier guitar-and-voice incarnation as the B-side of one of "The Sweet Keeper"'s singles). The other four were mainly to be found at second-hand markets or on platforms like eBay and Discogs — although, given the evident overproduction in the United States, it wasn't unusual even back in the '90s to find copies of "Everybody's Angel" and "Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness" on the Reprise label, sold for next to nothing on CD in longboxes or on cassette with a punched or clipped corner.

As for anthologies, two official ones have been released over the years. "The Best of Tanita Tikaram" (1996, Warner) has the merit of including a beautiful English-language cover of Lucio Battisti's "E penso a te" ("And I Think Of You", translated by Tikaram herself), which almost makes up for the inclusion of a clumsy dance remix of "Twist In My Sobriety" that, incidentally, wasn't even authorised by the artist, but it suffers from a rather unbalanced tracklist — just one track from "The Sweet Keeper", one from "Everybody's Angel", a full four from "Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness" and five from "Lovers In The City", practically half the album — which fails to give listeners a complete and truthful portrait, and highlights the shadows more than the highlights of an up-and-down career (was it really necessary to include "Happy Taxi" and "Lovers In The City" instead of "Thursday's Child", "Deliver Me" or "Feeding The Witches"?).

Aside from the two unreleased tracks mentioned, the "best of" is of limited use to fans who already own all the albums, since the versions included aren't the single edits. In short, every aspect of the anthology — including the cover art, an anonymous collage of old photos and artwork from the five albums drawn upon — gives the impression of a contractual obligation release, heartless and half-hearted, made simply to close out a deal.

The story is different for "To Drink The Rainbow", an anthology curated by Pete Paphides, released via Needle Mythology and mastered for CD and vinyl at Abbey Road Studios. Not quite a "best of volume 2", even though the overlap is minimal (just "Trouble", "Only The Ones We Love" and the already-mentioned Battisti cover), it places emphasis on the post-Warner era but includes only fourteen tracks, for technical reasons — the more songs squeezed onto one side of an LP, the worse it will sound, and a double LP would have driven the price up too much — and probably licensing issues too. On the plus side, eight songs are presented on vinyl for the first time. It's a fine playlist that showcases a less obvious yet still captivating side of Tanita's songwriting, though calling it an "Anthology" is something of a stretch (not least because her two biggest hits, "Good Tradition" and "Twist In My Sobriety", are completely ignored).

So here comes “The Wea/ East West 1988-1995” to fix the aforementioned problems. Not only are the albums present in their entirety, but they're enriched with alternate versions, edits and mixes of the singles (in some cases very different from the versions included on the LPs, for instance “I Love The Heaven’s Solo” enriched by the intervention of a gospel choir), studio-recorded B-sides, instrumental versions and whatever else you could ask for. Missing are a few unreleased live tracks included on the early singles, and for licensing reasons there's no trace of the two songs from Mark Isham's record (which came out on Virgin Records) or the cover of Elvis Presley made for Nme's tribute.

Listening to “Ancient Heart” it seems incredible that such a young girl – who, as she admits in the notes accompanying the booklet, owned only a handful of cassettes in her own collection, and fondly mentions Nina Simone and Suzanne Vega, the latter an obvious influence on “I Love You” – was able to put together a record already so mature and substantial. There are insights into the writing of some songs, like “Good Tradition” (#10 in the UK), bringing up Dickens for its references to the fireside, and delightful anecdotes on how the line whole cotton, whole cotton ears ended up in “Cathedral Song”, the song from which a line gives the album its title. We also learn that “World Outside Your Window” was taken into space by Helen Sharman, and that despite being name-checked in “I Love You”, to this day Tanita Tikaram has never seen the film “Betty Blue”.

Rod Argent's arrangement for “Twist In My Sobriety” is still brilliant today, with that oboe part carving out a starring role for itself, but it isn't the record's only peak: also worth highlighting is the jazzy atmosphere of “For All These Years”, with Mark Isham's trumpet and an arrangement that brings the track close to Marcus Miller and solo-era David Sylvian, and the beauty of “Valentine Heart”. Songs the casual listener would never have known just from hearing the 1996 “best of”.

Moving on through the listening and the reading of the notes, Tikaram reveals herself to be highly critical of “The Sweet Keeper”. “It's a textbook case of a difficult second album, it's hard for me to listen back to it because I feel so detached from it.” Despite reaching number three in the UK charts, just like the previous “Ancient Heart” (and it must be said Wea made a smart call releasing the record in the decidedly uncompetitive month of January, rather than throwing it into the meat grinder of the Christmas releases), this time there were no hits of particular impact, even though there's certainly no shortage of gems and the four singles were very well chosen: “We Almost Got It Together” has a sticky riff and a thoroughly likeable video, with Tanita surrounded by children of every ethnicity, and it's never a bad idea to launch an album with an uptempo track; “Little Sister Leaving Town”, by contrast, is a slow, intense song performed with real pathos, “Thursday’s Child” has a fresh melody driven by Helen O’Hara's violin, and “Sunset’s Arrived” is bolstered by a “spacious” arrangement, where every instrument sits comfortably within the soundscape. The track listing placement of “It All Came Back Today”, long and mournful, is odd; it would have benefited more from closing side A rather than sitting third. Another highlight is the spartan yet charming “Love Story”, with John Giblin on fretless bass. Whatever the naysayers said at the time, calling it a “record of leftovers” or a work “put together under too much pressure and in too much of a hurry”, “The Sweet Keeper” in this box set reveals a charm perhaps we hadn't fully appreciated back then. The production, once again by Rod Argent and Peter Van Hooke, is flawless, and manager Paul Charles's work had, up to this point, been spotless. Then something stopped working.

“Everybody’s Angel” comes out in 1991, carried by one of the finest songs in Tanita Tikaram's catalogue. “Only The Ones We Love” is about as close as it gets to the Leonard Cohen of “Ain’t No Cure For Love”, in beauty and intensity, with Jennifer Warnes's heavenly counter-melody (thanks to whom Tanita discovered the Canadian poet and songwriter, who passed away in 2016). The rest of the record, meanwhile, has more in common with the classic style of Van Morrison, suspended between soul, rock, jazz and folk, with a wealth of horns – alongside Mark Isham there's also Irish saxophonist Richie Buckley – and a warm, organic sound that shows real chemistry between Tanita and her backing band.

“Deliver Me” boasts backing vocals from Carol Kenyon, the unforgettable voice on “Temptation” by Heaven 17, and Katie Kissoon. Among the fourteen songs are two recovered B-sides from “The Sweet Keeper”: “I Love The Heaven’s Solo” is even chosen as the second single, in a brand-new arrangement, and “Hot Pork Sandwiches” shows an unusually playful side of hers. The record, cohesive and with a lovely sound, sells well but not brilliantly – if the first two had both landed on the podium of the charts, this time she has to settle for a still-respectable nineteenth place. Too long, and with writing that isn't always sharply focused, “Everybody’s Angel” at times recalls one of those boxes of chocolates you buy at certain supermarkets: it's supposed to be an assortment – a coffee cream here, a hazelnut one there, a cremino – yet in the long run everything ends up tasting the same. One small novelty is Tikaram's involvement in production, alongside Argent and Van Hooke, who from this point on would be let go.

In 1992 comes the most problematic and frustrating record in the collection, and in her entire discography. “Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness” comes out too close on the heels of the previous two, and evidently no alarm bells went off at East West after the merely decent sales of “Everybody’s Angel”. Tanita then adds to the problem herself, producing the whole record alone and overindulging in moments of pure self-indulgence, which aim to come across as bold and experimental but more often reveal themselves to be victims of a quirkiness that exists for its own sake, not far removed from the solo efforts of Lindsey Buckingham in the Eighties. There are excellent songs, like the sole single “You Make The Whole World Cry”, with a video by Tony Kaye (“American History X”) too “artistic” for the American public, which rejected it outright, and which finds her playing with a Spectorian wall of sound, halfway between the Walker Brothers and the Cohen of “Death Of A Ladies’ Man”. Nothing on the radio at that moment sounded like it. And the radio didn't exactly go out of its way to play the song, which, like the album itself, this time failed to chart in the UK.

Also notable are “Trouble”, a successful attempt at writing a Chris Isaak-style song, “Men And Women” and “Love Don’t Need No Tyranny”. It's hard to understand why on three songs (“Any Reason”, “Heal You” and the delightful, if wildly cryptic, “To Drink The Rainbow”) Tanita Tikaram adopts an irritating vocal style, as if she were crying while drunk. Perhaps the intent was to evoke Roy Orbison's style, but the execution is dreadful. It's no coincidence that “To Drink The Rainbow” is among the tracks that benefit most from the acoustic reinterpretation found on the compilation of the same name (the key chosen suits her voice far better, and she finally drops the habit of marring her performances with pointless sobs).

This time someone at Warner shows a bit of backbone, pulls her aside – as Tanita herself recounts in the notes – and scolds her for wasting her own talent. It would mark the beginning of the end of the relationship between the artist and the major label. Three years of silence, unusual for the hyperactive Tikaram, are enough for her to lick her wounds and reinvent herself before returning to the public with new material. In 1995 comes “Lovers In The City”, largely recorded in the United States and produced together with Thomas Newman, composer of film scores such as “Scent Of A Woman” and “American Beauty”. Some tracks were re-recorded in London with the support of Gavyn Wright and the London Session Orchestra (“Feeding The Witches”, one of the collection's high points, but also “My Love Tonight”, “Wonderful Shadow” and the closing “Leaving The Party”); East West seems to believe in the project's potential and decides to invest in a photo shoot by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, portraying Tanita in an increasingly androgynous guise, almost à-la k.d. lang (with that certain je-ne-sais-quoi of Lloyd Cole and Presley, a few years before Sharleen Spiteri played at being an Elvis impersonator in Texas's “Inner Smile” video).

The evocative “I Might Be Crying” once again features her friend Jennifer Warnes, but it's inexplicable how “Yodelling Song” (yes, the chorus is literally sung in yodel style) ended up on the album and was even released as a single. Perhaps self-sabotage, who knows. Or maybe by then the writing was already on the wall (“Lovers In The City” failed to climb higher than 75th place in the UK, despite flattering reviews) and it was decided she might as well be allowed to do whatever she wanted.

With all its ups and downs, the first phase of Tanita Tikaram's career – who is currently finishing the recording of her tenth album, whose title remains unknown – holds a good number of songs worth revisiting and savouring at leisure. It's a real shame that 1998's “The Cappuccino Songs”, released on Mother Records, didn't do better (#69 in the UK) given that it finally had radio appeal, especially on “Stop Listening”, “Light Up The World”, the sensual “Amore sì”, the disorienting cover of ABBA's “The Day Before You Came” and “If I Ever”. “Sentimental” saw her collaborate with Nick Lowe and move into territory close to Norah Jones and Diana Krall, but few noticed. Between soul and Americana, “Can’t Go Back” (this time with Grant Lee Phillips as guest of honour) revitalised Tanita's career in a number of European countries, and so did “Closer To The People”, buoyed by new influences ranging from Anita O’Day to Philip Glass (evoked in “Glass Love Train”, the opening track).

“The Wea/ East West Albums” remains an excellent compendium, for all lovers of female singer-songwriter fare and beyond, but above all for those who don't already own the albums in question.

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14/05/2026