Very Best Of

For those who don't remember who Bucks Fizz were, they were the British winners of the Eurovision Song Contest in 1981, before Eastern Europe took over the contest and appeared to shut out all other nations. This was still a time when mixed boy/girl groups were in vogue in the contest, Brotherhood of Man, Teach In, Milk & Honey, and of course ABBA, all having won the annual show in the previous seven years. Bucks Fizz, like ABBA before them, launched their career appearing in front of millions of European viewers and, also reflected the success of ABBA, they continued on after the initial furor of the show had died away, achieving three number one singles in total, "Making Your Mind Up," "The Land of Make Believe," and "My Camera Never Lies." Much more of a singles band than album-oriented, they did in fact have 20 hit singles between 1981 and 1988, seven of them reaching the Top Ten, yet they had only ever spent one week in the album chart Top Ten with their second album, Are You Ready. Even their hits compilations had not performed as successfully as one might have thought they should: their original Greatest Hits in 1983, a 12-track album, peaked at a miserable number 25, and their first major collection in the CD era, The Best of Bucks Fizz in 1994, failed to chart at all, as did a double-CD, The Ultimate Anthology in 2005, with 32 tracks, over a quarter of them dance and extended remixes. So here was a chance to set the record straight and put together a compilation of hits of one of the successful fun pop bands of the '80s. The Very Best of Bucks Fizz contained 18 tracks, running roughly chronologically and missing only "Rules of the Game" and "Magical" from a complete list of all of their hits. If this album didn't sell, Bucks Fizz would probably never sell a full-length album. It didn't, which just goes to prove the adage that some bands, especially fluffy pop ones, should stick to singles. [A U.K. release of the CD came with a bonus DVD.] ~ Sharon Mawer, AMG