Solid Bronze: Great Hits

Solid Bronze: Great Hits is The Beautiful South's ninth album and second greatest hits compilation. It was released in November 2001 and contains 19 tracks. The album contains two songs ("Pretenders To The Throne" and "Dream A Little Dream") that were released between Carry on up the Charts and Blue Is the Colour, and never made it onto any album. It produced one single, "The Root Of All Evil", released the same month as the album, and only getting to number 50 in the UK Singles Chart. The album got to number 10.Unforgivably, Solid Bronze shares not one, not two, but a whopping seven tracks with its predecessor. Which effectively means you are buying the Morcheeba remix of "The Mediterranean," a couple of other tracks off Painting It Red, the Mama Cass cover "Dream a Little Dream" from the French Kiss soundtrack, a couple tunes from Quench, the one mandatory new song, "The Root of All Evil," and a "rarity," "Pretenders to the Throne." And don't forget the cleaned-up version of "Don't Marry Her." Sure, Paul Heaton is a great songwriter, Jacqueline Abbott and Brianna Corrigan have lovely voices, and every song here is good in its own way, but you can't help thinking of the whole album as an enterprise ironically marked by the cynicism that distinguishes some of the Beautiful South's best songs.