Alannah Myles - Alannah Myles

1989 rock was a live and well. Seemingly out of nowhere Alannah Myles was suddenly everywhere, and propelled by "Black Velvet" she became an overnight sensation that took over a decade of hard work to achieve.

I may as well get right to the elephant in the room right off the bat. "Black Velvet" is still an amazing song. Considering that musically the song is essentially a generic vamp on a bass driven 12 bar blues shuffle the song is immediately identifiable. It was also played to death and while it never got old, it sure did get overplayed. It also became the high water mark that everything else would be measured by.

Fair or not, that's how things go sometimes.

Hair metal and an abundance of musical excess and fret shredding was the flavour of the day, and Alannah Myles managed to be of the times but a step removed at the same time. The guitar work of Bob Bartolucci, who I remembered from the GNP album (also from 1989, I don't remember which came first), and Kurt Schefter were right in the pocket and they had chops.

This was a rock record, but with a sultry twist that didn't come across as cheap and sleazy. The album opens with "Still Got This Thing" a great song that tonally set the stage for the album, and by the third song when things go mid tempo with "Black Velvet" it was sequenced perfectly. By the time the first side concludes with "Lover of Mine" a near perfect slow dance with just enough crunch to feel like a power ballad, you knew you were listening to something special. The second side opens up with "Kick Start My Heart" and we're back in the groove. There isn't a dud on the second side, and by the time things close with "Hurry Make Love" it's been a hell of a ride.

Now with all of this hyperbole you'd be surprised (or not, how am I to know) to know that while I liked the album back in the day, I also kind of dismissed it a little because Christopher Ward, who was then a veejay on Much Music ... for whatever reason I always thought of him as a musical nebbish, and he was no J.D Roberts (before he morphed into John Roberts on Fox). It more than unfair, and honestly when the awards started to come in for the album, Alannah always thanked Christopher. Maybe there was more to this guy ... there was. Of the ten songs, Mr. Ward (see, I'm trying to be respectful) co-wrote nine of them, and he served as executive producer on the album. He eventually earned my respect, although I'm pretty sure he still has no idea he needed it in the first place.

Alannah Myles would go on to sell over a million copies in Canada. If you didn't read that in your head as Dr. Evil go back and read it again. That's ONE MILLION in a country that was just over 27 million that's a lot of records. It would go platinum in the States as well.

The album still sounds great. David Tyson produced this one, and it was mastered at Sterling Sound by the legendary George Marino.

This would be her defining moment, and while her subsequent albums were still very good, she would never again reach the heights attained on her debut. Heck, even her 1997 release ARIVAL (which didn't have the space to make it read a rival) was good, although when I was reviewing still on my old banophernalia site (long gone, do not google that now, it was usurped by a NSFW site) I thought it would be funny to trash the album. I was wrong, and I'm sorry.

Alannah Myles is still out there, and from what I've read her contract with Atlantic at the time paid everyone but her ... which seems to be a pretty common story which always makes me sad.

Back in 2007 or 2008 (not really clear which) she re-recorded two dozen songs and released it as Black Velvet - it is very good.