Music Sound

Remix album

Remix

A remix album is an album consisting mostly of remixes or re-recorded versions of a music artists' earlier released material.

Remix albums have been around since the early 1980's and the earliest one to appear is often noted as Soft Cell's 1982 release, Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing, (containing the track "A Man Could Get Lost" which is notable as one of the precursors to house music). A month after the Soft Cell album, The Human League's, Love And Dancing was released, and just under a year later Imagination's Nightdubbing was released.

The format was later popularised by the Pet Shop Boys' 1986 release, Disco, and then the band-wagon was jumped on further by popular artists such as Madonna with her 1987 EP, You Can Dance and in 1990 by Paula Abdul's Shut Up And Dance.

Since the format was popularised in the late 80s and early 90s, remix albums have become a way of cashing-in on an artist's popularity, taking advantage of an artists existing fanbase, and often by collecting already released remixes (available on another format such as singles and rushing out a remix album to capitalise on the popularity of a performer, during a lull in their album releases, whilst touring, or to further prolong/exploit the popularity of a successful album.

Although they had existed for years, remix albums still eluded a sense of mainstream acceptance. That would all change in recent years with releases from acts such as Destiny's Child, Mariah Carey, Jermaine Dupri, P. Diddy, Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, and Jennifer Lopez, whose 2002 remix album J to tha L-O!: The Remixes was the first remix album to ever debut at Number One on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart, have all taken advantage of the format.

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Music Sound, v. 2.0, by MultiMedia

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.