VA - Music To Watch Girls By Volume 3 [2CD Set] (2000)

This is the third instalment of the Music To Watch Girls By series--a collection of so-called easy listening greats, but defining it as such is to do these songs a serious disservice. How can any album which features such bona fide classics as "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys or Aretha Franklin's "I Say A Little Prayer" ever be deemed kitsch or in any way camp? The best albums seldom need reviewing, a simple tracklisting instead being enticement enough--and so it is with Music to Watch Girls By Volume 3. Make your life just a little sweeter with Bobby Darin's definitive reading of "Mack the Knife" or the melancholic sweep of "Moon River" by Henry Mancini. Romance simply doesn't get any more heartfelt than Doris Day's "Secret Love", or come to that the smouldering velvet tones of Johnny Mathis gliding through "Misty". Far from being "easy", this is music at its most classy, the inclusion of Keith West's largely forgotten "Excerpt From A Teenage Opera" being reason enough to set this collection apart from the usual cobbled-together fare that often makes up such albums. --Billie Swift