Love Is a Stranger
Eurythmics
1991: RCA PD44266
Other than Laurence Stevens’s excellent-as-ever graphic design, the only reason to have this CD single (unless of course you have no other Eurythmics records) is the Obsession Mix of “Love Is a Stranger,” one of three versions done for the the re-re-issue of the original single (the other two being an instrumental version of the Obsession Mix and one called JC Meets the Obsessor which is essentially the same as the Obsession Mix but with a rapping-DJ vocal wrapping around various parts of the mix.
All three of the aforementioned remixes are decent, not stellar but far from lousy, but unfortunately this is the last we’ve seen of even decent Eurythmics remixes in the 15 years since this was issued. The remixes of singles from Peace and the new single “I’ve Got a Life” (as well as of Annie’s “Into the West” and “Pavement Cracks”) have just been dismally dull. What is it with remixes now that they all must sound like mournful and murky downers? I miss the witty sparkle and zest that made acquiring remixes exciting and desirable in the late 1980s and early 1990s—with all the material in these tracks to work with, it’s lamentable that all the remixes sound the same and so gutless.
I’d love to get Shep Pettibone or the Trailermen on the job, injecting Eurythmics single mixes with the goofiness of the former’s work on The B-52’s late-’80s tracks “Girl From Ipanema Goes To Greenland” and “Summer Of Love” or the latter’s butt-blistering dance-a-thon version of “Would You…?” for Touch and Go. THAT would be worth buying.
Comments © 2005 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.