A lot of reggae fans, be they casual or hardcore, are attracted to the music for the spiritual, militant and cultural themes expressed in it. So reggae love songs have always been a little on the dicey side. An entire album of reggae love songs is even more dicey, and an album of love songs that are cover versions done inna reggae style, well, that could be off-putting to both fans of roots reggae and those who value originality. Even with all that potential baggage, Covers For Reggae Lovers is pretty good. Having been out of touch with mainstream pop for more than 20 years, I'm unacquainted with many of the originals reconfigured here. But the ones most familiar to me- Kenny Rogers' "Through The Years" (covered by Luciano), Foreigner's "I Wanna Know What Love Is" (done by One Third) and "Someday We'll All Be Free" (original by Donny Hathaway, cover by Ian Andrews) -all went down quite nicely. Plus Sanchez, Tarrus Riley and Winston Francis all unsurprisingly show a knack for crooning on "Love We Had Stays On My Mind," "Stay With You" and "I Call It Love" respectively. Similar good romantic vibes are generated by names new to me, including Janet Kay, Calvin Richardson, Prilly Hamilton and Lee Francis. Yeah, a few of the songs are just plain corny or sweetened to the point of sounding like completely anodyne goo to my ears. This is still a recommendable collection though, given that even candied apples are bound to have some bad ones in the bunch.
