Personnel includes: Rachel Sweet, Dave Mackay, Barrie Guard, Liam Sternberg, Bazza, Martin Rushent, Alan Winstanley, Rick Chertoff, Kenny Vance.

Compilation producers: Liam Stewart, Gary Stewart.

Includes liner notes by Jim Green.

All tracks have been digitally remastered.

An unlikely member of the Stiff Records stable, Rachel Sweet was a brassy, big-voiced teenager from Akron, Ohio who nevertheless won over the very British, very punky label with her chutzpah and good taste in songs. This 1977 debut album--reissued and remastered in 2007--made a splash on both sides of the Atlantic, with a variety of pop styles suited to Sweet's emotive voice: there's countrified pop (Elvis Costello's "Stranger in the House"), updated Motown ("B-A-B-Y"), and big-beat new wave ("Who Does Lisa Like?"). Perhaps this reissue will persuade Sweet to come out of musical retirement and serve up some more great music from an adult perspective.

If Stiff Records wanted to market Rachel Sweet as an ironic sex symbol, they succeeded only at the irony of forbidden fruit; the picture of her on the back of this disc in a rugby shirt and jeans, head cocked, hands on hips, could grace the cover of Lolita's next edition. Sweet was fully sweet 16 in 1978, though, and pictures aside, "the little girl with the big voice," as the bosses billed her, lived up to that description. Belting, whooping, pleading, and near-weeping through the speakers, she rides the crest of Liam Sternberg and his Spector-ized production (that feel of a marching brass band keeping warm on a snowy morning), embodying the tough, rowdy sides of Brenda Lee and Wanda Jackson, though not so genre-bound as the latter. Sternberg's "Wildwood Saloon" and Elvis Costello's letter-perfect "Stranger in My House" hearken back to Sweet's childhood country records, but Carla Thomas' gleeful "B-A-B-Y," Del Shannon's mournfully up-tempo "I Go to Pieces," and Dusty Springfield's desperate "Stay Awhile" pulsate into new life through her throat, a crackerjack band including Brinsley Schwartz and Lene Lovich swirling faithfully along. Another Sternberg original, "Who Does Lisa Like?," opens with, "Sittin' around in the Firestone parking lot/It's alright!," and climaxes by insisting on the primacy of the title question over starvation in India and war in Baghdad. Only a true believer touched with the power of imputing her true belief could run that one back for a touchdown. ~ Andrew Hamlin

Fool Around: The Best of Rachel Sweet compiles the finest moments of the singer's career with the first album represented in its entirety (including the U.S. version additions), the rare "I'll Watch the News" and "Be Stiff" from Stiff Records samplers, a couple each from her two lesser albums, and the title track from the Hairspray soundtrack. A strong collection, this is probably the only Rachel Sweet disc to own for all but the obsessive completist. ~ Chris Woodstra