All Saints - All Hits (2001)

When they debuted in the early 90's, All Saints were part of the popular
British girl group wave kicked off by Spice Girls. While Spice Girls were
all about girl power and character image, the All Saints were music
aficionados with a softer, more sophisticated brand tied less to their
looks and more to their music. The group came together in 1993 when Melanie
Blatt and Shaznay Lewis began recording and writing at a studio on All
Saints Road in London's Ladbroke Grove.

The duo hooked up with R&B vocalist Simone Rainford and released a single
for ZTT Records in 1995 before they parted ways with Rainford and were
dumped by the label. Undeterred, Blatt and Lewis recruited native Canadian
Nicole Appleton and, later, her big sister Natalie, to make All Saints a
quartet. All Saints weren't together that long - only two albums and a
handful of singles - but that was enough to rack up a bunch of tabloid
headlines, several celebrity romances (Shaznay with Damon Albarn, Nicole
with Robbie Williams and Liam Gallagher), one skin-baring movie for the
sisters Appleton, and several big U.K. hits (and a few minor US hits).

It might not be a lot for a hits collection, but it was enough, as the
13-track collection "All Hits" proves. This is padded out a bit, with two
1998 remixes (one of 'Lady Marmalade' one of 'War Of Nerves') and the
original hit version of the spectacular "Pure Shores" plus its "2 Da Beach
U Don't Stop Remix", and it bends the rules by featuring "Twentyfourseven,"
a hit by Artful Dodger featuring Melanie Blatt's vocals, but that's not
necessarily a bad thing (particularly in the case of "Twentyfourseven"),
since this does consolidate the basic hits - "Pure Shores," "Never Ever,"
"Under the Bridge," "I Know Where It's At," "Black Coffee," and "Bootie
Call" - onto one disc.

All Saints did make good albums - both of their records hold their own
against the Spice Girls - but inevitably some will just want to hear the
hits, and this does an excellent job of serving them up with style.