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'The Perfect Year', Dina's 7th consecutive hit, followed 'Don't Be A Stranger' into the Top 5 in January 1994... Her debut solo album So Close has now sold in excess of 1 million copies in Britain alone.The sleeve note here is technically correct that this single peaked at 5 in the chart dated 8th January 1994 (and so announced on the 2nd) but of course that would have been based mainly on sales in 1993 - entirely logical really, as the song is set on New Year's Eve. It was for one week in December that year when both the singles mentioned in the note were in the Top 10 simultaneously; a rare achievement in those pre-download days and one not matched by any other female solo act in the whole decade.
What remains curiously unmentioned is that this wasn't another selection from her debut album but the big song from Andrew Lloyd Webber's then-new musical Sunset Boulevard. Carroll was not a cast member, but merely a popular singer of the time, presumably called in to record the song as promotion for the show. Regular readers won't be surprised to learn that I've never seen the musical itself and so I have no real idea of how it fits into the story, but of course I know roughly what it's about so I presume that there's some element of delusion somewhere in the song. Out of context, that's not really portrayed in this version but Carroll gives a good straight performance and the song isn't bad by the Llord's standards, though still more MOR than I'd usually go for. And in places it does remind me slightly of 'I Only Have Eyes For You'.
I'm not sure whether this is the end of Side 1 or the start of Side 2, but either way there do seem to be a lot of slow songs bunched together at this point.
Also appearing on: Now 24, 26, 35, 43
Available on: Andrew Lloyd Webber - Gold
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