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Tanita Tikaram / To Drink The Rainbow: An Anthology 1988-2019

Newly curated compilation • Signed vinyl and CD editions available

By Paul Sinclair

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42


Pete Paphides’ new record label Needle Mythology delivers its third release next month, a Tanita Tikaram anthology called To Drink The Rainbow: An Anthology 1988-2019.

This new collection – curated by Paphides himself (with input from Tanita) – delivers 14 tracks, spanning nine albums over a 30 year period. The writer and broadcaster has long been a fan and had this to say about the singer-songwriter who recently celebrated her 50th birthday:

“Tanita is best-known for ‘Twist In My Sobriety’, but in the ensuing decades, she’s amassed an incredible body of work. As she’s matured, her curiosity and enthusiasm have helped shape a very different artist to the teenage Virginia Woolf obsessive a lot of people remember from those early Top of the Pops appearances. No-one else sounds like her; and when it comes to direct, emotionally disarming melodies, she’s one of my all-time favourites.”


The collection all but ignores the first two albums (an acoustic version of ‘Valentine Heart’ is one of two bonus tracks) and concentrates on what is likely to be less familiar material, including a trio of songs from 2005’s Sentimental, a couple from 1992’s Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness and the brilliant ‘The Way You Move’ from Tanita Tikaram’s most recent studio album, 2016’s Closer To The People. Eight tracks are previously unreleased on vinyl.



As with the previous Stephen Duffy and Ian Broudie releases, the vinyl edition of To Drink The Rainbow will be a gatefold package and comes with a bonus seven-inch single (with the two extra tracks). The CD comes as a ‘vinyl replica’ package with the same bonus tracks appended.

Miles Showell has mastered this collection at Abbey Road Studios, with the vinyl pressed at the old EMI plant in Hayes Middlesex, now operated by Vinyl Factory.

Both formats are available exclusively via the Needle Mythology store with SIGNED elements. The vinyl comes with a signed lyric sheet while the CD edition is supply with a signed postcard. Various bundles are also available via this official store.

To Drink The Rainbow: An Anthology 1988-2019 is released on 27 September 2019. Full track listing is below with SDE’s annotations as to where the tracks come from.

To Drink The Rainbow: An Anthology 1988-2019 vinyl LP + 7″ single

Side 1

1. My Love (Acoustic) (original version from 2005’s Sentimental)
2. Play Me Again (from 2005’s Sentimental)
3. Cool Waters (from 2016’s Closer to the People)
4. Only The Ones We Love (from 1991’s Everybody’s Angel)
5. Trouble (from 1992’s Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness)
6. And I Think Of You (E Penso A Te) (from 1996’s The Best of Tanita Tikaram)

Side 2 

1. The Way You Move (from 2016’s Closer to the People)
2. Love Is Just A Word (from 2005’s Sentimental)
3. Amore Si (from 1998’s The Cappuccino Songs)
4. To Drink The Rainbow (Acoustic) (original from 1992’s Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness)
5. Can’t Go Back (from 2012’s Can’t Go Back)
6. Every Day Is New (from 2005’s Sentimental)

7” Single

A. Glass Train Love (L.A. Version) (original version from 2016’s Closer to the People)
B. Valentine Heart (Acoustic) (original version from 1988’s Ancient Heart)


To Drink The Rainbow: An Anthology 1988-2019 CD edition

1. My Love (Acoustic)
2. Play Me Again
3. Cool Waters
4. Only The Ones We Love
5. Trouble
6. And I Think Of You (E Penso A Te)
7. The Way You Move
8. Love Is Just A Word
9. Amore Si
10. To Drink The Rainbow (Acoustic)
11. Can’t Go Back
12. Every Day Is New
13. Glass Love Train (L.A. Version)
14. Valentine Heart (Acoustic)

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42 Comments

42 thoughts on “Tanita Tikaram / To Drink The Rainbow: An Anthology 1988-2019”

  1. It completely ignores her finest album, Lovers In The City. So no. I don’t need this at all. It is not definitive, it does not acknowledge her entire career. Immensely disappointing.

  2. Although this compilation omits a lot of my favourite songs, I really like Pete’s approach. I don’t mind if I never hear Twist in My Sobriety ever again, and I don’t really miss that synthpop sound of the first two albums either.

  3. I’m a completist with TT, and I’ll be purchasing this for the ‘bonus’ material. still… it’s an oddly curated and poorly representative set.

  7. Hey Pete,
    As a longtime admirer of the brilliant Tanita Tikaram – there since the very beginning – I commend you for this wonderful project and release. While each of her fans may have worked their own track-listing a little differently, I completely understand and applaud the ethos of this collection. As a whole, I think the tracks you have selected work well together stylistically. I also particularly like the running order / flow of the songs. My signed copies of ‘To Drink The Rainbow’ are preordered!
    While I appreciate her entire output, my favourite album is ‘Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness’ (criminally underrated and overlooked), so it’s a thrill to see two tracks from that album on the compilation. Hopefully ‘Eleven Kinds’ and other Tanita Tikaram albums do get the reconsideration they deserve.
    I would love to see the albums not originally released on LP receive vinyl reissues, particularly ‘Lovers In The City’ and ‘Cappuccino Songs’. Any chance of this being a future undertaking of Needle Mythology?
    Thanks again… looking forward to spinning this record!

  8. A shame that this isn’t a properly curated 2 CD set including B Sides, obscurities, demos, live recordings and other rare work.

    Albums being released on CD with their lengths restricted to the limits of vinyl is very much a case of “the tail wagging the dog” imo. Nice philosophy behind the release, but the “Anthology” title is misleading and the ommission of so many rare tracks is a great dissapointment. I’ll stick to owning her first 2 albums on CD and the handful of CD singles with interesting Bonus Tracks that I’ve purchased on ebay (sorry Tanita).

  9. Interesting release from one of my favourite artists of all time.
    One only regret: no tracks from the wonderful “Lovers in the city”. But then again, so many beautiful and deep songs on this compilation.

  10. I really don’t see what the problem is with a carefully curated, vinyl-length compilation album, or, in fact, with vinyl-length albums period. That’s how it used to be, and that’s how things still work best; it’s because it’s a format that hasn’t been improved upon in the 35 years since the passing of the vinyl era that people are going to back to the classic long player format. I don’t believe anyone can listen to pop/rock music in a way that does it justice in blocs of time that are any longer than 40-50 minutes.

    1. A compilation is not an album. I have to agree that studio albums became (much) too long during the golden age of CD, in the 90’s, and usually I much prefer a 40 or 45 minutes album to something running 60+ minutes. But when you’re summarizing a decades-long career with some “Best Of”, “Greatest Hits” or “Anthology” compilation, your selection should only be limited by what is worth being compiled and not by the running time of vinyl. Just release it as 1-CD and 2-LP, like many others do.

      1. Hi there. The thing about the label is that we’re trying to do everything to the very highest standards: mastering at Abbey Rd; pressing at the old EMI plant now run by Vinyl Factory. So if we were to maintain those standards and make this release a full double album, we’d be looking at a retail price approaching £40.

        1. Hey Pete,

          Replying to you here as I cannot find an e-mail address for Needle Mythology to mention a problem – I see only links to Townsend Stores.

          Anyway, I got my package today (15 Nov) and while all else is there (including the signed card with the CD version), there does not seem to be a signed lyric sheet with the LP. There is an inner sleeve on the LP with the lyrics, but that is not signed. Was that supposed to be signed, or is there also supposed to be a signed lyric sheet as my invoice (order # 2612973) says? Can you help get me one?

          Let me also say the other releases I’ve gotten from you have been great.

          1. ADDENDUM:

            Eventually was able to get a hold of Townsend Stores and they are sending the print.
            Sorry for any hassle this has created!

  11. Been a fan since the beginning…whilst I can see what is trying to be achieved with this compilation I can’t help agreeing with everyone else, that’s it’s a missed opportunity and that expanded versions of at least the first three albums would have been preferable. Vastly underrated and criminally overlooked…and this does nothing to redress that imbalance.

  12. Underwhelming, to say the least. If you’re releasing a CD anthology, spanning nine albums over a 30 year period, this should definitely comprise more than just 14 songs, especially if your only (odd) explanation for this are the limitations of vinyl. That said, I bought the first six of her nine albums and IMO you’re not missing that much beyond her very first album, especially due to her rather limited voice. In particular, don’t expect anything similar to “Twist In My Sobriety”.

  13. Looks like a great sampler / place to start for an artist I haven’t kept track of at all and wouldn’t really know where to start, aside from the well known hit single.

    1. Hi Steve. Thank you for the enthusiastic response. All the songs on the record can be heard on Spotify (with the exception of the L.A. Version of Glass Love Train), so you can make an informed decision before deciding whether to make a purchase! Cheers, Pete

  14. Would love to see the use of the word curate restricted to museums and art galleries.
    Also sad to see the number of songs to be used for a cd restricted by a fairness issue over how many tracks a vinyl album will hold. It’s tough being a cd buyer:)

  15. Interesting collection, but very underwhelming…I have that 1996 collection which is pretty great, as I only knew her 1st album “Ancient Heart” and wanted a nice overview to start a catchup…and read she did a few more albums after she left Warner…was hoping this would be a 2-3 CD anthology, similar to 2CD sets by unique female artists like Beth Orton & Jane Siberry…but this does not do it…a long career like TT’s and only 14 tracks?? Even the first collection, while not complete, is a decent 17 cuts, one being a remix…

  18. I always took ‘Anthology’ to be a comprehensive career spanning compilation to showcase the artists complete repetoire [Bryan Adams’ Anthology for example].

    I thought it a misprint when it said 14 tracks.

    Despite, for me, the dubious title I shall certainly partake of this..

    2. Hi Stephen. If you exceed around 25 minutes on a side of vinyl, then the sound starts to deteriorate – that’s why there are six songs per side on the vinyl (with the other two on the extra seven-inch). And, obviously, once you’ve established that there are 14 songs on the vinyl set, it’s unfair to exceed that total on the CD. Apologies if you were misled by the word “anthology”. My earliest memories of the word “anthology” were poetry collections that made no attempt to gather everything together in one place. But it might well be that in the world of music, the word has assumed different resonances. To address a couple of points made by other fans, the idea of this collection was to re-present her to an audience that hasn’t kept track of her progress since those early hits and to say, “Look what you’ve been missing!” With that in mind, it made more sense to weight it towards more recent releases. Also, most of Tanita’s recent releases haven’t been released on vinyl, so this was a good chance to make some of those songs available on the format for the first time. Finally, I genuinely think that, brilliant as she was from the very beginning, Tanita has continued to improve as an artist with every passing record, and I wanted us to put together a record and really brought that home. She should be revered in this country the way Paolo Conté is in Italy or Haris Alexiou is in Greece, and this collection is an attempt – certainly on my part – to make that case.

      1. Hi Pete, I think you have explained the spirit behind your job perfectly.
        I may be favoured by the fact that I am not really interested in TT whereas other fans inevitably have their wishes or very learned opinions on the tracklist (as I would for other artists/bands), however I just wish to say that we should all remember that it is wonderful to have a person like you having the idea of setting up a label ideas and making such efforts for us vinyl lovers.
        So the “taste” and reasoning behind you choice of tracks may be very personal, but it is nonetheless interesting and perfectly legitimate, let me say. A labour of love, as the whole project is.
        If I lived in the UK I would immediately offer you my help, should there be need for it, to give you a hand in bringing forward the wonderful enterprise of Needle Mythology!
        Thank you for the compliments for Paolo Conte. I wonder what TT’ s Italian connection is with two titles in Italian.

      2. I see what you were trying to do, and I think you’ve absolutely nailed it.
        This album has gently percolated into my soul and for me, is right up there with my favourite TT releases and beyond that, one of my all time favourites.
        Thank you.

    3. Perhaps it’s an age thing, but when I was a youth an anthology was essentially a personal selection of what the compiler felt to be the best or most representative works of an artist or genre.

  19. Odd tracklisting. I wouldn’t have included Trouble or And I Think of You or Amore Si. Plus there are earlier songs that would have fitted on there – Deliver Me, Little sister leaving town, Sunface, I might be crying and of course Twist in my sobriety. I think either she should have started where her last Best off stopped, or been a proper career retrospective.

  22. The title is a bit of a misnomer (just one song is from 1988, and not even in its original version). An exquisite playlist, but not really aimed to the casual fan – and the long-time ones already own most of the tracks included here, even if on CD.

    The Best of Tanita Tikaram (1996) was underwhelming (too much material from Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Lovers in the City, while The Sweet Keeper and Everybody’s Angel were represented by one song each) and now out of print, so there’s still room for a proper collection of her “Warner years” including the singles in their single edits/mixes, b-sides, collaborations and key album tracks. Something Music Club Deluxe could do, like they did with other Warner acts from Chic to Tim Buckley (which was tastefully remastered too).

  23. Not snobbery. Ancient Heart was released on vinyl recently. This new collection concentrates on later material. Sentimental (with contributions from Nick Lowe) is probably my favourite TT album. Glad therefore to see it well represented here.

    1. I’d imagine they probably thought it rather unbalances the whole thing. And if you want ‘the hits’ there are other ways to pick them up.

  25. “Tanita is best-known for ‘Twist In My Sobriety’….”. Really? The no.22 hit? I feel ‘Good Tradition’ is what she’s best known for, which reached no.10!

    1. Twist in my Sobriety was top 10 in 6 countries, Top 30 in a further 3. Good Tradition was her highest charting UK single but internationally no where near as successful.

        1. Gareth … My mate suggested we watch Tinita Tikaram on the main stage at Glastonbury in 1995 instead of watching The (up and coming) Verve on the NME stage. A mistake in my eyes? I have forced myself to be a fan as a result – Grrrr … and I went to the same Uni as her brother Ramon

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