Greetings and welcome to the Sugar Minott JukeBox. Without a doubt Sugar Minott has been and will be for some time to come, one of the most prolific music makers Jamaica has ever produced.
To mark the very sad occasion of his death on Saturday, July 10, we have compiled a list of 100 of his most popular songs. We have so far uploaded 67 of them for you in the jukebox on the right.
For now, to hear the songs just click on a title and click the play icon. Enjoy!
As far as musical milestones go they don’t get much bigger than Lincoln Barrington Sugar Minott. It seems the singer Sugar Minott, who died on Saturday, July 10, following a suspected heart attack, has been around almost from the beginning of time.
Certainly his musical output from the earliest in the late 1960s to his current album “New Day” due to be released soon, suggests this. He is one of the few reggae artists to have had hits in every decade since their arrival in the business.
Sugar Minott is typically used to simultaneously topping mainstream, as well as underground, independent and reggae charts. His “Good Thing Going” scored a massive hit for him in the UK during the 1980s and it was (and still is) quite novel to see a reggae artists on national television.
He is also one whose versatility crosses music styles, seemingly able to switch from moving love songs to deep spiritual tomes praising Jah, before surfing onto the pop channel, then back again into the latest dancehall style, all without skipping much of a beat.
He is truly an original and as such can never be replaced, regardless how often he is studied and copied. To say he will be missed is an obvious understatement. His music, as shown in the list below, will live on. Enjoy.
This is not meant to be a disrespect to Elton John nor his fans, but, after 12 years it’s dawned on me that the tune he performed in tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, was actually quite an unworthy effort, in my view.
Maybe it fitted the mood of the times, capturing the depth of feeling that swelled up around Britain at the time, but today it feels woefully…inadequate.
Given Elton’s immense ability as a composer/songwriter one thinks using but the biggest challenge he would have had to face was performing live without crying at the ceremony. How taxing would merely reheating it up then dishing it out would have been? Elton could have done better. Princess Diana, a woman loved by so many.
At the very least an original song would have been fitting, not one previously written to honour attractive but pill-dependent drinks tippling Hollywood actress like Marilyn Monroe. Then again maybe Elton was making some kind of obscure connection between the two blondes from opposite side of the poind. We’ll never know. What we do know is that the Diana loving public deserved better for pretty much the same reasons as above.
Maybe there simply wasn’t enough time to compose something completely new, but the thought came to me after a drea, just how instantly forgettable a tribute it was, in my opinion, to Diana Princess of Wales. I suspect many of you probably won’t even remember the title of the song, let alone the melody.
And that is precisely my point!
“Candle in the Wind” is the song Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote in 1973, a requiem for Marilyn Monroe, who had died 11 years earlier. In 1997, John performed a remake of the song as a tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales who died that year. This version reached No. 1 around the world, a much greater success than the original, but was it a fitting tribute to Diana?
[Maybe it took me so long to reach my realisation because I too, though not a royalist per se, could've been caught up in the emotional upheaval on hearing about Diana's tragic death in an horrific car crash in Paris.]
Michael Jackson came this close to being murdered on many occasions; or at least his character has anyway. But, like his friend Elizabeth Taylor, he has developed a knack for surviving against the odds.
While he made himself and others lots of money they accepted him and promoted him to the hilt. But when he decided to “see a new light” and take his music to a more conscious direction and refuse to be manipulated or exploited by the corporate interest he was contracted to, they sidelined him to teach him a lesson. You don’t mess with the Zohan, right?
Suddenly, you started to read items in the gutter press hinting how Jackson was fraternizing with young boys, etc. Then a number of other incidents happened. Banks started to call in debts on his property, something they were previously comfortable with because they knew Jackson has a licence to print money.
Yush intelligently covers cutting edge urban entertainment, music, trends, street style & culture.
