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 Emma Bunton - 'Life in Mono', 2006 • 3rd Album |
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 27th January 2021, 12:19 PM
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#41
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 BuzzJack Platinum Member
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Since so many videos of Emma's TV performances were posted on the Free Me thread, showcasing how wide-spread her promo was, I thought I would put here the videos from TV performances from the Life in Mono era.
You can tell a very different story with the approach here from her previous era. Downtown, for instance, got a promo promo spread. I remember a few more of these but these are all the videos I can find right now. All I Need to Know really deserved better promotion, unfortunately. Such a gorgeous track performed in really lame shows with no staging, no set, just her miming with no effort made it really impossible to sell the track.... This era is, for me, the great 'lost' era right next to Forever. Both albums were just stunning and I hope Life in Mono gets some appreciation around its 20th anniversary at least... Downtown should have never been the lead single. It was a charity single for Children in Need, not album launch material  DOWNTOWN ALL I NEED TO KNOW |
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27th January 2021, 03:25 PM
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#42
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BuzzJack Idol
Joined: 29 June 2006
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I think many artists lost so many trickle sales and artists of today have a huge advantage with that, they literally dont lose sales at all. I think so many songs especially the big hits would have such bigger totals in today climate, the spice girls had so many huge singles that would have far far higher totals in todays climate. Kylies cant get you out of my head is another song i feel this way about, it opened with 306,000 sales on its debut week through physicals you can only imagine what that would translate into in todays market.
The Spice Girls albums mainly the first 2 would be on so much higher if they were part of the huge streaming era. |
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31st January 2021, 10:55 PM
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#43
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BuzzJack Regular
Joined: 16 November 2006
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Emma always has been my favourite but being honest I never understood Life In Mono. After Free Me she gained some solo projection and I was expecting a single/album next year (2015) to keep building her profile but she took two years, came back with a cover, the whole photography & videography was so cheap compared to all the Free Me era... But what caught my attention is that Maybe was the most iconic of Free Me so I was expecting her to develop more this sound and bring more uptempo songs but she did the album with no options commercially. For me this album always looked like the rejects of Free Me, sad she didn’t work harder and was more ambitious about it.
This post has been edited by Joshnat192: 31st January 2021, 10:56 PM |
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31st January 2021, 11:00 PM
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#44
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BuzzJack Regular
Joined: 16 November 2006
Posts: 495 User: 1,990
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Also the whole feeling of the project for me (the performances, the looks, general image) she looked like 60 years old woman. She lost all her commercial appear on that era.
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1st February 2021, 12:44 AM
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#45
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
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QUOTE(Joshnat192 @ Jan 31 2021, 10:55 PM)  Emma always has been my favourite but being honest I never understood Life In Mono. After Free Me she gained some solo projection and I was expecting a single/album next year (2015) to keep building her profile but she took two years, came back with a cover, the whole photography & videography was so cheap compared to all the Free Me era... But what caught my attention is that Maybe was the most iconic of Free Me so I was expecting her to develop more this sound and bring more uptempo songs but she did the album with no options commercially. For me this album always looked like the rejects of Free Me, sad she didn’t work harder and was more ambitious about it. I think Life in Mono was a natural progression from Free Me, personally. Free Me is very varied in its soundscape, but it is almost like a conceptual album and Life in Mono takes that further and becomes more cohesive. Is it better? No. But I like it just as much because there is a really good progression to the album. The cohesion, the writing is excellent, she sounds heavenly and goes a bit dark in places. Production wise is also very good. Yes, the launch of it and the promotion was bad though, and that taints the memory of the album. But if you abstract that from the music, it stands on its own very nicely! 
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1st February 2021, 04:43 AM
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#46
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BuzzJack Regular
Joined: 25 March 2018
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I remember on first hearing this album...I quite hilariously thought that maturity in her sound must just come from her turning 30. Now that I'm a few years past 30 myself, I'm like...yeah, 30...isn't...especially mature.
I like Life In Mono overall. All That You'll Be and All I Need To Know are gorgeous. Take Me To Another Town and Undressing You are probably my two favorites. But it just doesn't have the sort of material that could set charts on fire...even in an alternate world that gave a fair shake to solo Spice releases. That's not necessarily a bad thing. She sounds lovely on all of it. Songs are pretty. It just is what it is. Outside of Downtown, Take Me To Another Town is probably the closest thing to having hit potential...but even that's not quite Free Me or Maybe. What's a little curious is potential hits were actually recorded for this era. The unreleased Crazy Beautiful is an ear worm. What we've heard of Ladylike is clearly a demo...but you can tell it was a draft of something that could have been great. There are others too. Yet...to me...the stronger material for this album (that was written by Emma, no less) got dumped in favor of five covers and decidedly more muted offerings. Emma only wrote 7 of the 14 songs on the Deluxe edition. Of course, by the time My Happy Place came along, nothing by a solo Spice was ever going to chart well...but I actually do think Baby Please Don't Stop and Too Many Teardrops sound like hits that just arrived too late. This post has been edited by Piers: 1st February 2021, 07:03 AM |
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1st February 2021, 08:48 AM
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#47
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
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Sure there are no 'sure fire' hits on the album but that's ok - it is a stunning album to have and listen to anyway
Never really cared much for Crazy Beautiful to be honest... |
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1st February 2021, 09:31 PM
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#48
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BuzzJack Regular
Joined: 16 November 2006
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I agree with you that the album is really nice to hear in full, I still remember all the lyrics and hate the fact that it isn’t in Spotify. Simply caught my attention that she gave everything for Free Me but Life In Mono looked like 0 efforts..
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2nd February 2021, 11:27 AM
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#49
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
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Take Me To Another Town had hot potential !
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14th October 2021, 04:48 PM
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#50
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BuzzJack Enthusiast
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I am looking for interviews made by Emma about this album. track by track maybe where she talked about the album. There is not much stuff on the web.
This post has been edited by Babyboy: 14th October 2021, 10:58 PM |
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14th October 2021, 09:04 PM
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#51
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
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Dont think she did that, unfortunately. She did do track by track interviews on her website for the Free Me era, but I cant find them anywhere now.... unfortunately nada for Life in Mono... Promo was really bad back then...
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14th October 2021, 09:11 PM
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#52
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 BuzzJack Platinum Member
Joined: 6 September 2017
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QUOTE(Piers @ Feb 1 2021, 05:43 AM) Of course, by the time My Happy Place came along, nothing by a solo Spice was ever going to chart well...but I actually do think Baby Please Don't Stop and Too Many Teardrops sound like hits that just arrived too late. 100% this such a shame they were not singles in the LIM era I'd take both of those over Downtown and All I need to know. |
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14th October 2021, 09:27 PM
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#53
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
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The problem with Life in Mono era was that she was jumping onto it off the back of Strickly and Downtown. They just weren't representative of her as an artist and also she was confident that it would sell like hot cakes for christmas off the back of it.
When it didnt (event thought it didnt sell badly at all, just charted really low due to Christmas madness), her momentum was completely gone. All I Need to Know is one of the best songs a Spice Girl ever put their name to. It was framed at the time as a success in waiting cos it was so beautiful, and people were hoping it would do what Simon's other protegee, Will Young, did with his last single - All Time Love. It would go on to sell well and steadily because of how beautiful it was. Unfortunately the song didnt do much. Promo was drastically limited. She refused to go on a radio tour at the time (and rightly so!), and also she got preggers so she stopped any promo for it. It's a gorgeous, fantastic album. Really underrated and deserved much much better than what it got in the end. I am not sure any of the solo albums ever got to such a high level of concept and quality as Life in Mono. Yes, it didnt have many 'chart hits' but it is really well thought out and produced, it flows really beautifully. I always play it when Autumn is arriving. It feels perfect for that kind of season. |
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15th October 2021, 06:26 AM
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#54
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 BuzzJack Platinum Member
Joined: 7 January 2009
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Life In Mono quite simply doesn't have any hit singles on it. It's why they probably tacked on Downtown to it and tried to push it in the Christmas rush.
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15th October 2021, 07:36 AM
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#55
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
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QUOTE(tommie @ Oct 15 2021, 07:26 AM) Life In Mono quite simply doesn't have any hit singles on it. It's why they probably tacked on Downtown to it and tried to push it in the Christmas rush. Hence why the promo tactic failed an ultimately superior album 
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15th October 2021, 08:57 PM
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#56
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
Joined: 6 September 2017
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All I need to know as beautiful as it is, isn't a patch on All time love, musically or vocally. It also doesn't sound like a song for radio at all unlike All time love, it was a bad choice for a single really.
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16th October 2021, 10:20 AM
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#57
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 "Jayrusaleminians" - Umi.
Pronouns: he/him
Joined: 4 April 2007 Posts: 41,456 User: 3,217
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I much prefer All I Need to Know to All Time Love
 It's hard to compare them because Will was still reliably getting huge support from the media and radio. 2 weeks at #1 on radio airplay for All Time Love. I'm sure Will could have released Emma's song and done well with it at that point in his career. |
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16th October 2021, 10:43 AM
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#58
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
Joined: 7 September 2017
Posts: 5,086 User: 39,587
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QUOTE(-Jay- @ Oct 16 2021, 11:20 AM) I much prefer All I Need to Know to All Time Love It's hard to compare them because Will was still reliably getting huge support from the media and radio. 2 weeks at #1 on radio airplay for All Time Love. I'm sure Will could have released Emma's song and done well with it at that point in his career. Exactly. I think Simon Fuller (who was representing Emma at the time) really misjudged the Life in Mono era, unfortunately. The album should never have been released after Downtown in the first place. Downtown was a cute buzz and charity single. The album needed a couple more tracks being released ahead of it, as Emma has been away for over 3 years from the music scene by then. A release strategy similar to Free Me could have worked, I think. And Strictly has never been a huge impact-show for music sales overall (bar a couple of songs here and there)... Then the promo for All I Need To Know really was one of the worst of any Spice-related eras back then, which is a shame really. I still think that All That You'll Be would have been a better single than All I Need To Know (even though the latter is the better song). How I would have done it: - Downtown in November 2006 for Children in Need - All That You'll Be in February 2007 - Take Me To Another Town and Life in Mono (album) released April 2007. The album would't include Downtown - Undressing You in June 2007 + Attending festivals (if enough success had been generated) - Not Crying Over Yesterdays (new single remix) in late September 2007, with a delux version also released including Downtown and a couple of other new songs. A small, intimate autumn/winter tour 
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16th October 2021, 11:06 AM
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#59
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
Joined: 16 November 2009
Posts: 7,605 User: 9,988
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Can we all just download and stream LIM and get it over 60k and silver. It annoys me much more than it should how close it is to silver but sells so little still so far away.
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16th October 2021, 12:08 PM
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#60
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
Joined: 7 September 2017
Posts: 5,086 User: 39,587
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QUOTE(sammy01 @ Oct 16 2021, 12:06 PM) Can we all just download and stream LIM and get it over 60k and silver. It annoys me much more than it should how close it is to silver but sells so little still so far away. Streaming now, hen 
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