Amanda Lear - I Am A Photograph (1977) & Sweet Revenge (1978) disco classic albums [2 albums on 1 CD special limited edition] High Quality 320kbps

Amanda Lear

I Am A Photograph (1977) & Sweet Revenge (1978)

disco classic albums

[2 albums on 1 CD special limited edition]

 

Amanda Lear (née Tapp; November 18, 1939) is a French singer, lyricist, composer, painter, TV presenter, actress and novelist.

Lear began her career as a fashion model in the mid 1960s and was also the muse of Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. She first came to the public's attention as the fetish clad model on the cover of Roxy Music's album For Your Pleasure in 1973.

She was a multimillion selling Disco Queen in the mid 1970s to the early 1980s in Continental Europe, Scandinavia, and other parts of the world with hits such as "Queen of Chinatown", "Follow Me", "Enigma (Give a Bit of Mmh to Me)" and "Fashion Pack". Lear has recorded 15 studio albums, released 60 singles and sold 15 million albums and 25-30 million singles worldwide.

The first single to be lifted off Sweet Revenge, the dark and seductive opening track "Follow Me", powered by Lear's characteristic deep and recitative voice and in fact the theme of the devil, was an instant smash hit, reaching Top 3 in the West German singles chart and also went to #3 in The Netherlands, #4 in Belgium, #6 in Austria, #7 in Switzerland and was a Top 20 hit in most parts of Europe. The single is estimated to have sold some two million copies worldwide, and has served as Lear's signature tune ever since.

The 12" mix of the track, mixed by Canadian DJ Wally MacDonald and originally only released in North America, also incorporates the finale of the concept medley, "Follow Me (Reprise)".

The Sweet Revenge album itself was certified gold in West Germany, Italy, France and Belgium and went on to sell in excess of four million copies and charted in forty-one countries, including Chile, South Africa, India and Thailand where it stayed on the charts for sixteen weeks, spawning further European hit singles like "Gold", "Mother Look What They've Done to Me", "Run Baby Run", all three from the concept medley, and "Enigma (Give a Bit of Mmh to Me)". Again, all of these tracks were co-written by Lear and this in combination with a larger-than-life image very much the creation of herself made her one of the few artists of the Eurodisco era whose star power and charisma even outshone the music itself - all according to plan - and the Amanda Lear persona left an impact on European pop culture that has lasted for three decades.

The front of the Sweet Revenge album cover shows Lear as a leather-clad S&M dominatrix cracking her whip, the sepia-toned back cover pic has her reclining on an old beer barrel with sequined curtains behind her, à la Dietrich in The Blue Angel, and the inner sleeve again pictured her posing topless. "Sweet Revenge is of course the album I'm most proud of. I put so much of myself into it. I wrote the lyrics, created the double cover, chose the pictures. I tried to tell a story. So, at least for me, it is the best one."

Her debut album I Am a Photograph, released in December 1976, was recorded in Munich, with most songs composed by Monn and arrangers Rainer Pietsch and Charly Ricanek and Lear writing all the English lyrics. The musical backing was provided by the same international session musicians as on contemporaneous recordings by best-selling Germany-based disco acts like Boney M. and Silver Convention, among them drummers Martin Harrison and Curt Cress, bassists Gary Unwin, Dave King and Les Hurdle and guitarists Geoff Bastow and Mats Björklund.
The title track "I Am a Photograph" was a reference to her days with the Zoli Modelling Agency, but Lear's selfpenned, witty, provocative and sometimes even slightly disturbing lyrics signalled that there was more to this former glam model than meets the eye. In Allmusic's biography on Lear reviewer Michael Freedberg writes: "I Am a Photograph is the first of six sleazy, hard-to-find albums in which she flaunts a voice so heavy with low notes it makes one wonder if she really isn't a man after all. But Lear's slow notes are simply an exaggeration of the whiskey-voiced sultriness created by Marlene Dietrich. That isn't to say, however, that Lear's lyrics — or the music's inverted proportions — don't exploit her mythology as a kinky concoction to the bursting point".
The album included Lear's first European hit "Blood and Honey", lyrically paraphrasing Dalí's 1941 painting La Miel Es Más Dulce Que La Sangre (Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood), follow-up single "Tomorrow" and a cover of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" and Leroy Anderson's "Blue Tango", all of which became repertoire standards. I Am a Photograph's mixture of lush disco, schlager, kitsch and camp, topped with Lear's deep half-spoken, half-sung vocals and her characteristic Franglais accent was a winning combination; the album spun off four Top 10 singles in Italy and stayed on the West German albums chart for thirty-three weeks alone.

The second edition of "I Am a Photograph", which also contained German #2 hit "Queen of Chinatown", sported a free pin-up poster picturing a topless Lear smiling towards the camera, a photo originally featured in her Playboy spread.

 

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