OUT went the high-camp disco diva show tunes of Fame, Portfolio and Muse, three Seventies' albums of no future.
In came the new Grace Jones, suddenly the fashion setter with 1980's Warm Leatherette, the first of her Compass Point trilogy, where no-one could keep up with Jones, a creature so exotic and alien that she ended up as a novelty Bond Girl.
In the way record labels once did, Island boss Chris Blackwell took a punt on a makeover, placing Jones with Black Uhuru rhythm section Robbie Shakespeare and Sly Dunbar in the Bahamas, as the fulcrum of a session group that Jones would later call "the united nations in the studio". #
Nothing sounded like it sounded before, as Love Is The Drug, The Pretenders' Private Life and The Normal's Warm Leatherette were re-styled in a louche, lush combination of musical fire and vocal ice. Longer versions, dub versions and single versions now stretch the Jones grip, but you also can hear why the botched She's Lost Control missed the original cut.
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