Rhoda Dakar is back with her first solo album in a number of years, with a collection of reggae and ska covers by artists and songwriters she admires.
Rhoda Dakar began her musical career as lead vocalist with all female 2-Tone band, The Bodysnatchers. They only ever released two singles, ‘Let’s Do Rocksteady’ and ‘Easy Life’. After a year together they split and Rhoda went on to guest with The Specials in Europe and the USA, having featured on their second album, ‘More Specials’, for which she won the first of her seven gold records. After their demise, and before joining Jerry Dammers’ new project, she recorded The Bodysnatchers’ first original song, ‘The Boiler’, a harrowing tale of date rape, which was inevitably banned. The Special AKA spent the next two years recording ‘in the studio’, spawning a top ten hit with ‘Free Nelson Mandela’.
Following a run of outstanding and acclaimed singles, on 26th May Sunday Best Recordings will release ‘Version Girl’, Rhoda Dakar’s first album in five years.
‘Version Girl’s title is derived from Dandy Livingstone’s ‘Version Girl’, a song partly used as an intro track to the album. Rhoda’s connection to Livingstone dates to her first ever release, a cover of his ‘Let’s Do Rocksteady’ which she recorded with The Bodysnatchers for the iconic 2-Tone label.
A 12-song collection, the album features a diverse range of covers chosen by Rhoda, celebrating her love of Reggae, Ska and Rocksteady. Most of these songs have never before been given proper treatments in these incredibly versatile and timeless Jamaican genres.
Rhoda said:
“I wanted to go a little left field for this. There seemed no point in covering songs which already had perfectly good Reggae versions. Both UB40 and Madness have already done a series of definitive covers albums. So, rather than hanging on their coat tails, I went for songs that had no previous definitive Reggae, Ska or Rocksteady versions that we could find anyway. I think it also continues to demonstrate the amazing adaptability of these Jamaican genres!”
The tracklist for the forthcoming ‘Version Girl’ album is:
‘Version Girl (version)’
‘Stop Your Sobbing’
‘Everyday Is Like Sunday’
‘What A Wonderful World’
‘Hangin’ ‘Round’
‘Song To The Siren’
‘Walking After Midnight’
‘The Man Who Sold The World’
‘Comme Un Arbre’
‘As Tears Go By’
‘Love Hurts’
‘Peace, Love And Understanding’
In order to support this exciting new release, Rhoda will be heading around the country playing a number of instore performances. Her busiest day will be Thursday 1st June, as she will be kicking off her day with a lunchtime performance in Portsmouth, before heading along the M27 to Brighton, where she will be playing live from 6:30pm at Resident in Kensington Gardens. Fans will be pleased to learn that they can right now snap up the limited edition galaxy purple vinyl version of the album or the limited edition neon violet LP, which will be ready for collection (and signing by Rhoda) at Resident during her special album launch show (Thursday 1st June). Find out about this HERE.
