Other People's Songs : Erasure : Review : Rolling Stone

Eurotrash dance popsters cover Buddy Holly and other oldies Vince Clarke reigns as one of New Wave's all-time nattiest songwriters -- first with Depeche Mode, then with Yaz and then with vocalist Andy Bell in Erasure, penning synth-pop swoon classics such as "Blue Savannah" and "Victim of Love." So Other People's Songs is an audacious concept: oldies covers in a vampy Eurotrash style that could give you third-degree Eighties burns. There's one absolute comic masterpiece: Bell camps up the Frank Sinatra ballad "Ebb Tide" over perky mall-disco beats, hitting a histrionic falsetto for the big finish. Erasure do the Ronettes' "Walking in the Rain" almost as well as Cheryl Ladd, they do Buddy Holly's "Everyday" better than James Taylor, they prove that one man and one man only was meant to sing "Can't Help Falling in Love," and they tart up Peter Gabriel something fierce.

ROB SHEFFIELD
(From RS 916 – February 20, 2003)