Track Listing

1. Let The Music Play
2. Sweet Somebody
3. Give Me Tonight
4. My Heart's Divided
5. One Man
6. Do You Wanna Get Away
7. Stronger Together
8. Urgent
9. Love Goes All The Way
10. Prove Me Right
11. It's Got To Be Love
12. Do The Wrong Thang - Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force Featuring Shannon
13. Move Mania - Sash! featuring Shannon
14. The Best Is Yet To Come

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46183 in Music
• Released on: 2004-11-02
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Album Description
First-ever best-of album from this legendary dance floor diva!

With Let The Music Play: The Best of Shannon, this legendary dance floor diva’s biggest hits—from her ’80s heyday and her successful ’90s comeback—are finally available on a single disc. This album is a boon to collectors, since much of her material as been out of print for years, and completely unavailable in the CD era.

In 1983, the then unknown singer sang on a dance track produced by neophytes Mark Liggett and Chris Barbosa. Within a few weeks, the 12-inch of "Let The Music Play" was being spun by every DJ in New York City. Shannon followed this success up with a string of chart-topping dance singles, but soon left the music business for a successful stage-acting career. In 1995, she returned to music with the European-only single "It’s Got To Be Love" and appearances on singles by Afrika Bambaataa and Sash!, the latter of which made the U.K. Top Ten in 1998.

Customer Reviews

Why include a severly truncated version of her biggest hit??
Shannon's biggest hit, the one enduring song in her catalogue, is "Let The Music Play," one of the 1980s' most immortal dance songs. Finally, a greatest hits is issued and one can have these songs on CD...but the version of "Let The Music Play" included her is a severely edited version, not even the single version, which I used to have on a 45!! What on earth was the logic behind that? And yet we get the full length versions of her non-hits. What a bummer. Also missing is "It's Over Love," her late 1990s collaboration with Todd Terry which was a NUMBER ONE HIT on the dance charts. What were the people who put this together smoking????

The Best is "still" yet to come.
I was so excited to see shannon's Greatest hits, but was not to happy with the song selection. First of all, there are no remixes here to be found. Shonnon had some of the best remixes of the eighties. You would think they would had at least put the remix of "Let the Music Play" on this collection. Secondly, The sound quality on the song "One Man" is awful. There's distortion threw out the song. I guess there was problems with the remastering of this track, but all the other songs sound excellent. and finally, there were many of her tracks ommitted from this collection like Dancin', You Put a Spack in my Life, and Believe in Me. It was nice to see some of her newer material here though. Over all, I am dissapointed with this collection. Most of her material is out of print, and I sadly don't see any of her albums seeing the light a day again.

At long last
truth be told... Shannon was actually one of the top dance divas of the mid-1980's, she had hit after hit in the clubs, but after the dismal failure of her third album, "Love Goes All The Way", she quit music for a long while.

This set compiles all of her classic mid-1980's r&b singles, as well as a few latter-recordings. Making it the best Shannon collection on the market.

However, let's go to the negative points.
- As the cd clocks in at 68 minutes, there's still room... but yet ShoutFactory has included the severely edited version of Let The Music Play here, which cuts off an entire minute from the 45/single version. LTMP is Shannon's all time classic hit, the song everyone knows and loves by her... what is there to lose by adding that one extra minute to make the song the classic we love and remember it as? All of the other songs are complete.
- "Do Tha Wrong Thang". I don't know why this was included on here. It's an awful over-long track that has a few vocals by Shannon but is mostly a few rappers. The song has no tune or melody in the slightest and drags on and on and on....
- Outside of "Move Mania" (which was a UK top 10 hit), Shannon's more recent material has been very bland and formulaic. I would've loved some more album cuts from the first two classic albums over the forgettable La Bouche knockoff "It's Got To Be Love" and the in-one-ear, out-the-other dullness of "The Best Is Yet To Come"

However, since reissues of Let The Music Play and Do You Wanna Get Away are pretty much out of the question, this set is the most affordable and convienient way to get Shannon's classics on CD, even though "Move Mania" is the only post-1986 track worth a second listen here.