Mari Wilson - Cover Stories (2012)

2012 release from the British Pop vocalist, best known for her '82 hit 'Just What I Always Wanted'. Teaming up with string-arranger, orchestrator, composer and pianist Simon Hale, Mari has recorded some of her favorite songs. The album is a surprising and diverse mix of both classics and contemporary songs, from the likes of the Bee Gees and the Pretenders to Gillian Welch and Dusty Springfield. Recorded in Hale's Oxfordshire studio and mixed by Haydn Bendall, the end result is a more chilled affair and in many ways more of a concept album than Mari's previous releases. Her lightness of touch, notably on 'They Don't Know' originally by her friend Kirsty McColl, is to be applauded and when Big Audio Dynamite's Mick Jones and Don Letts heard that Mari was recording a version of 'Everybody Needs a Holiday' they said "Really glad it's gonna get a second time out with a new feel by a great singer...."