Julia Fordham Porcelain 1989

Besides being an amazing photo shoot of a cover, Julia Fordham's Porcelain is a breathtakingly lovely recording, jam packed with great songs. I was looking for something I hadn't heard in a while, and stumbled upon this sumptuous record. Fordham writes these lovelorn melodies and sings these intimate lyrics with her crystalline voice. They are near perfect sophisticated pop-rock gems. The songs and arraignments are splendid, really.  

Her early records into the nineties all contained a few great songs each. And the rest of the material was hardly slouch, but Porcelain holds up pretty much in it's entirety. So does The Julia Fordham Collection 1998, an unassailable best-of disc with the cream of the crop of her first five releases.