Billy Ocean - Billy Ocean/City Limit

Original-LP twofer encapsulates BO Mk. 1

For any DJ who must admit to built-in-lightshow disco crimes in every decade since the 70s, there are surely only a handful of singles you can reach for in every set, whether catering for a 70s pop, disco or soul crowd. Billy Ocean’s Red Light Spells Danger is a propulsive, spiralling slab of Northern-inspired rockin’ soul and a guaranteed floorfiller that hit No 2 in 1977. As a bonus five-star single, it’s an important watershed on this two-disc set of Oceans’s GTO LPs of 1976 and 1980.

The trouble is, having worked his way up through a series of takes on cabaret-end Motown (Love Really Hurts Without You, LOD (Love On Delivery)) and scaled the heights of thrusting cool, Ocean had nothing with which to follow up his gem. When City Limit did appear, it was centred around a far more average synth-driven disco sound, with unspectacular singles charting at Nos 54, 42 and the big zero.

When the going gets tough… well, you know the rest. It’s brilliant that he went on to reinvent himself as a Stateside superstar in the 80s, but Red Light still shines out as his must-have moment.

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

7T’s GLAM | CDD 93 (2-CD)

Reviewed by Derek Hammond
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