Neon Nights

8 Jan 2020

Show 288 – WTF! It’s Victoria Beckham – Open Your Eyes. The Unreleased Album

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Before the Marc Jacobs campaigns, Vogue interviews and the flagship store on Dover Street, Victoria Beckham was and forever will be a pop star.

Specifically, she’s a Spice Girl.

With four Top 10 singles in a row tucked under her Chanel belt and a Top 10 debut album, Victoria Beckham never once actually flopped. She just stopped.

According to some, Vicky B recorded an 11-track dance-pop record called Open Your Eyes, but reportedly hated the songs, clashing with her then-manager Simon Fuller and her record label, Telstar Records. Instead, she teamed up with Damon Dash to set out in a more hip-hop oriented direction.

When Telstar Records heard the recordings, they were aghast. Victoria ultimately did concede to her label’s wishes…sort of, anyway.

By the end of 2003, Posh found a compromise between the two sounds by releasing a double A-side just after Christmas: the pulsating “Let Your Head Go,” a criminally underrated dance-pop tune with a Mommie Dearest-referencing music video — the epitome of Posh’s camp sensibility (“I’m a gay man trapped in a woman’s body,” she’s famously said in interviews) — and the hip-hop leaning, The System–interpolating “This Groove.”

The double single sailed to the #3 spot on the UK charts, and there were even murmurs at the time of a U.S. debut as “Posh Spice Victoria Beckham.” That, of course, never happened.

By early 2004, Victoria was preparing to release a single that summer called “Mine For Real” (also known as “My Love Is For Real”) – written by Cathy Dennis. By then, however, she was already feeling discouraged. “I used to think that if I put a good record out, like my last record [the double-sided This Groove/Let Your Head Go], that would be enough. But it’s not. The odds are so against me. I’ve spoken to [my manager] Simon [Fuller] about it – I’m not sure anyone’s ever going to give me a fair go with my music.”

Before “Mine For Real” even had the chance to hit UK radio, Telstar Records went bankrupt. And that was that.

Since Victoria abandoned her solo ambitions, about two dozen tracks have leaked from those post-Victoria Beckham sessions, including the 11-track dance-pop record, Open Your Eyes.

Zig-a-zig-Ah!!

Tracklist for “WTF! It’s The Unreleased Victoria Beckham Album”

Let Your Head Go
Open Your Eyes
My Love Is For Real
This Groove (Para Beats Mix)
Me Without You
Generate The Flow
Full Stop
Out Of Your Mind (True Steppers feat Dane Bowers – Below vs X.Men Vocal Mix)
Not Such An Innocent Girl (Robbie Rivera Main Mix)

All this & always posh on Neon Nights : the Number One most downloaded MUSIC podcast on JOY949.

Hosted by John von Ahlen and Costa Lakoumentas.

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