Wild Colour 'Dreams'

Chart Peak: 25

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The Perfecto production team of Oakenfold & Osborne are behind this massive club cover of the Fleetwood Mac standard 'Dreams'... It is the latest hit for the label who have had a great year with hits from Grace, B.T. and the Perfecto Allstarz amongst others.

I don't suppose you'd expect a lot of modesty from people who adopted the stagename Perfecto, but I presume it's somehow related to the press released that there's no mention of the nominal performer in that sleeve note. There is a picture of a crouching woman with corkscrew hair, who I suppose is meant to be Wild Colour, but no indication of what her name might be. The Internet doesn't seem in any rush to tell me either.

They might have been onto something with the idea of covering this song in a dance style. A couple of years later the Corrs scored their breakthrough UK with their version as remixed by Todd Terry (him again!) whilst Deep Dish went the whole hog in 2006 by bringing in the actual Stevie Nicks to sing it again and were rewarded with a Top 20 appearance. But this attempt peaked one place lower than the original during a far shorter run and without the excuse of coming off a multi-million-selling album. Believe me, I'm no great fan of this song in any version, but whoever the singer is could at best be accused of misreading the lyric, failing even to notice the pseudo-mystical elements of it. And the backing track smacks of hubris, merely recycling the most generic mid-nineties dance production elements. It deserved to be no more of a hit than it was.

Available on: Perfection - a Perfecto Compilation: Mixed Live By Paul Oakenfold