Earth Girls Are Easy ＜限定盤/Transparent Orange Vinyl＞

Julie Brown's 1989 film Earth Girls Are Easy, starring the flirty singer/comedian, Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, and a pre-stardom Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans, is a likable although slight bit of pop fluff, a description that applies to the soundtrack as well. Although a couple of the tracks feel like leftovers added to the disc because someone at Sire/Reprise thought the bands could stand the soundtrack exposure (there's no other excuse for the Information Society's moronically repetitive "Hit Me" or Depeche Mode's pointless cover of Bobby Troup's "Route 66"), there's a handful of solid commercial pop songs to be found. Daryl Hall and John Oates do a fine version of the Philly soul classic "Love Train" and session singer Jill Jones' reading of Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly's "The Ground You Walk On" is one of that songwriting team's better ballads. (Royalty's "Baby Gonna Shake," written and produced by Madonna's ex, Stephen Bray, sounds like a reject from the Material Girl's first album.) However, it's the three Brown-composed songs that are the heart of the disc. The title track, remade by producer Nile Rodgers under the pseudonym the N, and "Cause I'm a Blonde" are superior remakes of great songs from her first EP, 1985's Goddess in Progress. "Brand New Girl," though a weaker song, proves that Brown actually has a fine voice -- better than a lot of her contemporaries, in fact -- and might have had a career even without her daffy sense of humor. Earth Girls Are Easy is in every way a relic of the late '80s, from the MI DIed sequencers underpinning almost all the songs to Davis and Brown's hairstyles in the booklet photos, but approached in the right frame of mind, it's definitely got its charms. ~ Stewart Mason