Studio albums 17 Video albums 1 EPs 3 | Compilation albums 37 Music videos ? Singles 69 | |
 | ||
Amanda Lear discography consists of seventeen full-length studio albums, thirty-seven compilation albums, three extended plays (EPs) and sixty-nine singles. Her output also includes one video album and numerous music videos.
Contents
Background
Lear achieved her greatest international success between 1976 and 1983 when she was signed to West German label Ariola Records. The six Ariola albums were all released in Continental Europe as well as Scandinavia, Japan, South America and some parts of the former Eastern Bloc. Lear was in fact one of the very few Western artists in the 1970s to have her music officially released in the Soviet Union, on state-owned label Melodiya.
Amanda Lear's debut single was a cover of Elvis Presley's "Trouble", released in 1975 in France by a subsidiary of Polydor Records as well as by Creole Records on the British market. The single passed fairly unnoticed, however, it did gain some attention in West Germany. It was subsequently licensed and re-released by German Polydor in March 1976, with Lear promoting the single on German TV show Musikladen in May of that same year, which resulted in her being offered a seven-year and six album recording contract by the Ariola Records label. The French language version of the song appeared on the first European editions of Lear's 1977 debut album I Am a Photograph which also contained her international breakthrough single "Blood and Honey".
Labels
Following her initial signing to Ariola, various other labels were used to distribute her records in other nations, for example Chrysalis Records in the United States, Les Disques Direction Records, Siamese Records and Inter Global Records/Epic Records in Canada, RCA Victor in Australasia and South America, Columbia Records/Nippon Columbia in Japan, Eurodisc and Arabella in France, Epic Records in Greece and Cyprus, RTB in Yugoslavia, and both Polydor, RCA Victor and Ariola in Italy. In other European countries like Sweden, albums and singles were first imported West German Ariola pressings. With Lear achieving mainstream success in Sweden in 1980 with album Diamonds for Breakfast, the Scandinavian Ariola distributor, CBS Records, did however start manufacturing its own pressings of both albums and singles to meet with public demand. They also issued singles like "When" in 1980 and "Nymphomania" in 1981, targeted for the Scandinavian market specifically, although these tracks were never A-side releases in West Germany or any other territory.
Problems with Ariola
In 1982 Lear took legal action against Ariola-Eurodisc in order to be released from her recording contract on the grounds of artistic differences. The lawsuit was unsuccessful and she remained with the label as stipulated in the original deal until the end of 1983, resulting in single "Incredibilmente donna" and album Tam-Tam being recorded in Italy and double A-side single "Love Your Body"/"Darkness and Light" with Anthony Monn's sound engineer Peter Lüdermann. The relationship between Lear, Monn and her former record company was to stay strained all the way into the early 2000s.
Other labels
Since parting with Ariola-Eurodisc, as of the late eighties a daughter label of BMG-Ariola and eventually absorbed into what is now Sony Music Entertainment, Lear has been signed to the following labels:
Compilations
Made of Blood & Honey
Made of Blood & Honey is a compilation album produced by Michael Gordon and Stefano Previsti, and released 2 October 2000 by LaserLight Digital. The album includes four hits from the 1970s, as well as a selection of songs from the albums Uomini più uomini, Cadavrexquis and Alter Ego. Made of Blood & Honey is notable for featuring three previously unreleased cover versions: "C'est si bon", "Mellow Yellow", and "They're Coming to Take Me Away Ha Ha". The photograph used on the cover comes from Lear's performance of "La Bagarre" at German TV show Musikladen in May 1976. The album was released on a mid-price label only in Germany.