Erasure- I Say I Say I Say

This is the greatest Erasure album in the history of Erasure albums. Nothing else in the Erasure catalog can touch its majesty and anyone who thinks differently simply hasn't done their homework.

I remember vividly the summer this album came out. It was mere months before I started high school and this album was the soundtrack to my summer. Because I was going to be entering high school, my parents let me hang out with my sister and her friends. I got to go to parties and yuck it up with actual high school kids (remember when high schoolers seemed impossibly old and incredibly mature? Now they seem like the youngest and least mature people in the known universe). Everyone I knew was listening to this album. I made great effort to memorize the lyrics to this album, which paid dividends. The very people I wanted to impress were, in fact, impressed with my knowledge of Erasure lyrics. I was living in a strange world, but I loved it.

Nostalgia aside, I Say I Say I Say is the best collection of Erasure songs to appear on a single album (yes, I'm including their greatest hits in that statement). Not only do these songs blend perfectly with each other, they are individually astounding. Every single song from the wistful "Take Me Back" to the pulsing "Run to the Sun" to the simply lovely "Because You're So Sweet" could have been singles and they would have charted (at least in the UK). This is the Erasure equivalent to Ash's Free All Angels. I defy you to find a more solid top-to-bottom Erasure album. It can't be done.