Brian Eno - The Pop Album (1977)

Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno is of course best known for his work on the first two Roxy Music albums, but when he left the group after the release of 1973's 'For Your Pleasure', few people could have imagined that he would become one of the best-known names in the music industry, both for his innovative and experimental music, and for producing albums by some of the biggest bands of the last 40 years, such as Talking Heads, U2 and Devo. He brought ambient music to the mainstream, and invented the concept of oblique strategies, but tucked away on his albums have been some surprisingly commercial pop songs. I first found a compilation of these pop songs at the Music For Manics site here http://musicformaniacs.blogspot.com/2012/12/album-du-jour-9-eno-lost-70s-pop-album.html, and after downloading it I made a cover for the site, and on checking recently I found that the link is still live. However, he decided to use rare and live takes of the songs, which I was originally going to do, before I thought that there's no reason not to use the studio versions and make a more polished album. So here they are collected together onto a record which would undoubtedly have surprised many people, who at the time considered him a pretentious and artsy auteur.   

Track listing

01 The Seven Deadly Finns  
02 The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh) 
03 Needles In The Camel's Eye
04 Baby's On Fire
05 I'll Come Running
06 Some Of Them Are Old
07 St. Elmo's Fire
08 No One Receiving
09 Backwater
10 Spider & I
11 King's Lead Hat