Various – Now Dance 97

This album is a giant mixed bag for me, and it is a shame since this is the first release in 2 years. Yes, it seems that the series was offline during 1996 while the prior year had very few albums. This one feels more similar to the majority of future releases we would get based not only on the cover art but style of tracks.

The first CD contains a lot of average hits earlier on and the better ones definitely come in the second half. However, most of the music we get here is dance so they did a good job with that at the very least. The only true duds are the Spice Girls, Hot Chocolate's You Sexy Thing, Backstreet Boys and 911 for me. The rest stems from average to very good, with the very best being 2 Elvissa, Poppers, B.B.E's Flash and Amen UK. It is a good experience, but I think it could have been better, leaving out some of the overrated R n B hits and having actual dance.

The second CD is inferior I think, containing more duds and less dance music. The first two tracks immediately have me scoffing, but it does get better with The Chemical Beats, only to fall again with the Eternal and Coolio, both very lame tracks. I am also not a fan of Coco's I Need A Miracle whether it is the original or a remix, and prefer Fragma's Toca Me despite that being an overrated track as well. I also cannot fathom why Bentley Rhythm Ace is used here, especially being so near to the end. It makes very little to no sense in my opinion. However, CD2, much like the first ends off on a high note with Slacker, Tall Paul and especially the original Give Me Love by Diddy.

Overall, there are just too many non-dance tracks included for it to be any higher than a 3 star. It just ends up being another average album but nothing more. I would personally recommend The Best Dance Album In The World... Ever! Part 7 over this which is very similar but superior.

No reference to Hot Chocolate being a remix. But it is. The popular 1987 Ben Liebrand remix which charted well

This was the first volume in the Now Dance series for just over two years, the over-saturation of 1994 and comparatively lacklustre effort in 1995 perhaps signalling some low sales figures and a subsequent hiatus. But the catalogue number continued and the whole brand had something of a revamp; this was the first volume to have similar artwork to the main series, a trend that would continue for the rest of the run.

Dance music in 1997 will be remembered mainly for two things: Big beat and speed garage. Despite featuring Tina Moore on Now 38, the latter genre makes no mark on this volume, unless you count Rosie Gaines with her garbled 'Closer Than Close'. Big beat however is far more prolific, with The Chems, The Prodg, Moby, Bentley Rhythm Ace and Fatboy Slim, alongside the unlikely inclusion of Johnny Harris' 'Stepping Stones', complete with a subtitle of its origin on the tracklist.

While trance would arguably hit its purple patch in the summer of '99, 1997 marked the year that Positiva embraced the euro delicacy in the wake of its success with B.B.E.'s 'Seven Days And One Week'. Being an imprint of EMI, we are treated to a large number of Positiva hits, including PF Project and their Trainspotting cash-in, Coco and her original take on 'I Need A Miracle' that would land the label in hot water years later after that infamous bootleg, Spiller of 'Groovejet' fame masquerading as Laguna, B.B.E.'s tense follow-up hit 'Flash', Quicksilver (twice), Brainbug's humourous 'Nightmare', as well as Amen UK and Diddy, who would both score Positiva hits at some point in their lives but appear here on Feverpitch, EMI's hard dance offshoot. Throw in Boris Dlugosch and Adam F's 'Circles' and Positiva make up a quarter of the tracklist.

The remaining tracks range from big-hitters such as Blueboy's magnificent 'Remember Me' and Gala's euro-flavoured 'Freed From Desire' to outright pop from the likes of the Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys and Hot Chocolate. This foray into chart pop would infest the remainder of the Now Dance series, albeit with the occasional remix (such as Louise's 'Arms Around The World' being transformed into an incredibly camp hardbag workout by Rated PG).

All in all it's a fairly fun ride, with some fantastic sequences of tracks on both discs (the second half of disc one is particularly rewarding). The lack of hits such as 'Professional Widow' and 'You're Not Alone' can easily be traced back to licensing issues seeing as the 'Big Three' (Virgin, EMI and PolyGram) and their subsidiaries are the main source of this compilation, but the lack of Ultra Nate, Tina Moore and Todd Terry given their inclusion on the main Now series is a crying shame. Then again, we could have had Aqua, Hanson and No Mercy so for that we should be thankful.