The Julia Fordham Collection sounds like an haute couture collection by some English designer. The album sleeve itself tried to depict this where one is taken from an empty clothes rack on the front cover right to a full range of clothes hanging on the rack on the back sleeve of the album. Really, the album in itself is a collection of songs which covers the tenure of her career as a musician rather than a fashion designer but it is a crafty way of drawing parallels between the two. I first heard of Julia Fordham in 1987. My room-mate then had bought her debut album simply called Julia Fordham and the first thing that struck me was her voice. It was both masculine and yet angelic, simply beautiful. I fell in love with the voice first before the music. So ten years and five albums later with only a mere 2 million sales overall (a definite Rainsound pre-qualification), she has released a collection of her best music from all the five albums. Those who are already familiar with Julia Fordham's music and have yet to buy this one, there are 15 songs with two new versions of Happy Ever After (Rainforest Mix 98) and Where Does The Time Go (duet with Curtis Stigers) and a remix of I Thought It Was You and two previously unreleased songs i.e Kid and It was Nothing That You Said. Happy Ever After (Rainforest Mix 98) had some of the lyrics rewritten to reflect the current mood in South Africa which had inspired the recording of the song in the first place. The original version also appears on the same album. Somehow I still preferred the original version of Where Does The Time Go with the deep soulful voice of John O' Kane of the now defunct "Millions Like Us" (another possible great Rainsound band if it had survived!). John O'Kane's voice made the song for me albeit his were reduced to a mere background vocals compared to a duet in the new version. There are many interesting lyrics on this album and many struck a chord with me personally. In Porcelain she sings of being very much "in like" with someone rather than "in love" and whether that is enough for the other person. I Can't Help Myself, is about the intoxicating feeling of "just fallen" and being lost in someone. A friend once said to me that love is about getting lost in someone's eyes and I used to think he was being ridiculously romantic. Often times with the men that I know "it was nothing that you said, it was everything you didn't say" that made me feel lost! I Thought It Was You explores the possibility of meeting someone and wondering whether that someone is THE one. I guess if you are a hopeless romantic like me you would love this album and for those of you who have liked Julia Fordham music but was never one of the 2 million that have bought her albums before (like me), then this is THE album to buy.