Reggae Lasting Love Songs, Various Artists

By Kyle Young

Cheese can be a wonderful thing. It goes well with wine and crackers. However, not all cheese is equal. Some cheeses simply smell rank, and some taste like a salted, used, French Foreign Legion army sock that’s been pickled in cat urine.

This is precisely the kind of cheese to be found in Reggae Lasting Love Songs, which has the distinct aroma of a cheese that has indeed been left out too long. This is probably because this is the third volume, and anything that might have been fresh was used up on the earlier editions.

The impression one develops about this album is that it was refrigerated in an attempt to keep it for a Valentine’s Day release, but the power went out and no one thought to throw out the moldy cheese, mistaking it instead for blue-cheese. Of course, if you try to give this “gift” to your Valentine, you’ll likely spend a very lonely night with your faithful dominant hand, and will have to make it up to her by buying her real music.

There is no reggae on this CD. There is, however, bad adult contemporary with the occasional steel-drum and would-be reggae bass line.