Melissa Tkautz - Take Me Away & The Hits and More : Song Previews

3 months ago, Melissa Tkautz released her 20-years-worth-of-hits package, The Hits & More.
The collection included all of her 10 Aria-charting and non-charting singles since the start of her singing career in 1991. Thrown in for impact were unreleased songs from her Glamorous Life recordings, a NEW song and remastered 12" versions of her biggest songs in the 90s. The album is a good starting point for new fans who have just discovered Melissa's music and after hearing the songs, they could be scrambling on ebay for her back catalogue which is so rare you might get dizzy surfing.

The "bonus" unreleased songs Not Enough & Fake It Good are still awesome to listen to despite having leaked a couple of years ago. Both songs have that timeless and ahead-of-its-generation appeal that there's no way a casual listener could tell they were left-overs from an era gone by. They were longing to be released in the aftermath of Easily Affected's low charting in 2006. Great thing then that the 2N & Low Frequency Occupation-produced songs finally got justice after gathering dust for nearly 6 years!

As for the rest of the tracklist, it would have been much much perfect had Melissa added the b-sides of her earlier singles as well namely: Say Goodbye, My Favourite Room, Take It from Me, Let Me Out and Dream After Dream. Sadly, those rare gems never got the nod for inclusion. Instead, some 12" mixes of the 90s singles were chosen. Not that I don't like 12" mixes but the b-sides were best bets for more sales as fans hungry for rare songs won't hesitate downloading them if at all. Better yet, Melissa could have re-recorded the 90s singles with a current electro-dance production in the same context she had reworked Sexy Is The Word back in 2005 for the Lost & Found album. Imagine how delicious Skin To Skin, My House and Is It? would have morphed into!

Tracklisting:

Read My Lips
Sexy (Is The Word)
Skin To Skin
My House
Is It?
Glamorous Life
All I Want
Easily Affected
I Want Your Love
Something About You
Not Enough
Fake It Good
Take Me Away
Sexy (Is The Word) ’05
The Glamorous Life (D.O.N.S Remix)
Read My Lips 12"
Sexy (Is The Word) 12”
Skin To Skin 12”
Is It? 12”
Easily Affected 12”

Melissa's dedicated fan-base lovingly downloaded the GH album on its debut week giving it an Aria seal of approval at #29 on the Album Charts.

The verdict on music: Very Satisfactory. (7.5/10)

As customary with many other GH releases, there is always some new material added to perhaps signify that the artist is far from over with music. Just like when Dannii Minogue had a handful of then new songs for Hits & Beyond and Madonna's 3rd GH, Celebration, also had a couple of new tracks to accompany it with. For her part, Take Me Away is the new song Melissa had specially recorded for the Hits & More collection. While the dance veteran hasn't revealed yet who produced the brilliant track, fans begin to wonder why this masterpiece still never got a proper single release! It has all the elements of a "hit" single with a retentive hook that The Wanted took off and managed to make a hit with Glad You Came in 2011. It could be that the boyband's producer Steve Mac rushed for a home-run last year while Melissa's music gurus got delayed to assemble a chartopper. Despite the very close similarity, Take Me Away breaks away from the poppy Glad You Came with it's topnotch hot house production; perfect for the underground club scene on a sweaty Saturday night. "Take me away, awaaaay... Lost in this dream I'm falling!" Melissa sings the lines in wanton abandon. The bass resonates well with her sultry vocals and you wish that thumping feeling would never end. Now, if this song never ever becomes a single soon, Melissa's next greatest hits package will be one-hit less.

Vocals: 2, Production: 2, Lyrics: 1.5, Chorus Strength: 2, Mainstream Appeal: 2 = (9.5/10)

Listen to Take Me Away :

and compare with Glad You Came :