Marking the very first time an all-career-spanning Roxy Music collection has been made available on vinyl, ‘The Best Of Roxy Music’ will be released this September 2 via Virgin / UMC.
This iconic collection of songs will be available on 2LP 180-gram black vinyl and limited yellow vinyl D2C exclusive editions. Both include restored and enhanced artwork, lyrics, and have been remastered at half-speed by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios.
Since their inception in 1972, multi-platinum Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Roxy Music have left an indelible mark on the worlds of music, fashion, and art, merging the three with a singular and astonishing vision that brought them immediate, global success. Today they are regarded as one of the most influential bands of all time, whose music and iconic imagery continues to inspire new generations of artists.
Arranged in reverse-chronological order, ‘The Best Of Roxy Music’ track listing bookends their peerless recording career. The set opens with ‘Avalon’ and ‘More Than This’, two iconic compositions that propelled the band’s final album on to multi-platinum success. ‘More Than This’ alone has garnered more than 123 million streams. Elsewhere, songs like ‘Love Is The Drug’ and ‘Angel Eyes’ pioneered a new fusion of rock and disco; ‘Do The Strand’ and ‘Street Life’ blurred the lines between genres, and ‘Re-Make/Re-Model’ and ‘Virginia Plain’ at once birthed and defined the art-rock movement and influenced more than one generation of aspiring young musicians – from St Vincent, Sex Pistols and Grace Jones, to Duran Duran, CHIC, Franz Ferdinand and countless others. Of course, also included are the all-time great ballads ‘Oh Yeah!’, ‘Dance Away’ and ‘Over You’ and their sensitive interpretation of John Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy’ – a UK No. 1 for the band in 1981. Intense and emotive, these 18 songs capture the wide-screen vision of Roxy Music’s restless creativity across eight classic studio albums, recorded between 1972-1982.
2022 is a landmark year. Celebrating both the 50th anniversary of Roxy Music’s ground-breaking self-titled debut album, and 40 years since their eighth and final studio record, ‘Avalon’, shot to No. 1 in the UK album charts on its release in 1982.
In celebration, Roxy Music will embark upon their first tour in over a decade. Bryan Ferry, Andy Mackay, Phil Manzanera and Paul Thompson will perform together on stage for the first time since their sold-out and critically acclaimed 2011 ‘For Your Pleasure’ tour. 10 arena shows across North America will take place in September, before arriving in the UK on October 10, 2022 for three special dates in Glasgow, Manchester and London.
May 2022 saw the publication of Lyrics, the works of Bryan Ferry’s evocative lyrics of aspiration and romantic longing, published in one collection for the first time. A celebration of one of the most innovative and influential recording artists in the history of recorded music.
In addition to the newly pressed ‘The Best Of Roxy Music’, each of Roxy Music’s eight studio albums are also reissued this year as special anniversary editions with a new half-speed cut, revised artwork and a deluxe gloss laminated finish.
