The Collection

Spectrum Label (released 7 July 2003)

Ah, the sweet smell of cashing in .... this should have been titled "The Mish-Mash". The girls had been dropped by Mercury, but very unfortunately Mercury still owned the rights to their recordings.

In stepped Spectrum (a budget line label belonging to Mercury's parent label, Universal) with a cheap-looking, hastily thrown together "greatest hits" CD.

Alisha Rules The World
I Am, I Feel
The Incidentals
Air We Breathe
Pretender Got My Heart
Indestructible
Wish I Were You
Barbarella
Indestructible [Live]
If You Want Me Back [Live]
Push It All Aside
Karmically Close
Are You Jealous?
The Golden Rule
Pretender Got My Heart [Remix]
Air We Breathe [Talvin Singh Mix]
I Am, I Feel [Junior Vasquez Urban Mix]

Thanks to Andrew Stewart for the cover scans!

Since the girls only had 9 singles, the album is padded out with album tracks (a fairly random selection) and a couple of live b-sides from the House We Built era.

Bad use of artwork, fonts and logos, and it offers nothing new to the hardcore fan who already has everything. If they'd thrown us some small bone in the form of a new track this compilation wouldn't feel like quite such a rip off. However, having dumped the artistes they were not in a position to ask for another. Buy this if you must, I'd rather you sought out the Mercury studio albums though. At least they have integrity, and featured artist input.

Karen and Shellie were not consulted over this release at all. When Karen heard, on the Official Aa messageboard, that we were talking about this release she asked what it looked like and what tracks were featured on it! If anything demonstrates a lack of artist control (which highlights everything that's wrong with the music business), it's this.