Posted in: Great Deals, News | No Comments | Posted on October 19, 2021 by Mary Anne

New to the GREAT DEALS WALL - selected CD’s by Cat Stevens starting as low as $4.87 - while supplies last.

Cat Stevens was born as Stephen Demetre Georgiou to a Swedish mother and Greek father. He became a Muslim in 1977. After 2 years, he took the name of Yusuf İslam. He has sold over 60 million albums around the world since the late 1960s as Cat Stevens or Yusuf İslam.

Mona Bone Jakon (1970) marked the beginning of the Cat Stevens we know and love, forming alongside Teaser & the Firecat and Tea for the Tillerman the creative heart of Stevens’s oeuvre. Though previous releases showcased his sticky burr of a voice and flashes of his songwriting brilliance, it was on Mona Bone that Stevens became disillusioned enough with the music industry to write more deeply introspective and personal songs. It’s interesting to note that his disavowal of the biz (wryly commented upon in the song “Pop Star”) coincides with his increasing popularity.

Tea For The Tillerman (1970) As with the best of the Brit folk-rockers, Stevens mixed melancholy with whimsy. Yes, he was prone to airy platitudes, but when he harnessed his eccentricities, as he did throughout this 1970 masterwork, you had something truly distinctive.

Teaser and The Firecat (1971) - The third album Cat Stevens put out in a 15-month burst that began in the summer of 1970 with Mona Bone Jakon, Teaser and the Firecat is where the enigmatic folk-pop idol crested commercially, if not artistically. Its immediate predecessor, Tea for the Tillerman, possesses an air of mystery and unforced whimsy that proved impossible for Stevens to replicate. That said, the singer-songwriter had it in him to pull together a captivating collection that boasted two of the biggest hits of his meteoric, if self-inhibited, career-“Peace Train” and the sublime hymn “Morning Has Broken.”

Catch Bull At Four (1972) Celebrated and adored for his sanguine lyrics and irresistible hooks, Cat Stevens was one of the rare singer-songwriters capable of composing genuinely optimistic songs that didn’t leave a sappy residue in listeners’ ears. However, even a cursory listen to 1972’s Catch Bull at Four proves that the Cat had seen darkness, too, and that those darker elements had become more pronounced than they’d been in the past. The album’s standouts-the wistful reverie “Sitting” and the delightfully infectious “Can’t Keep It In”-are resolute in lyric and melody.

Buddha and the Chocolate Box (1974) Cat kept the commercial and artistic success going in ’74 with this #2 album, featuring the big hits Oh Very Young and Ready.

Gold - 2 CD Best of (2005) -For nearly four decades Cat Stevens’ music has touched millions of people worldwide. His heartfelt accounts of longing, lost innocence and the search for purpose helped make him one of a handful of artists to maintain a long-running presence on the radio and on the pop and the album charts. His songs, including ‘The First Cut Is The Deepest’, ‘Here Comes My Baby’, ‘Wild World’, ‘Father & Son’ and ‘Peace Train’ have been successfully covered by artists throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s. Cat Stevens Gold collects together 31 exquisite Cat Stevens classics, including the newly recorded Cat Stevens song ‘Green Fields & Golden Sands’, his first new pop recording in over 25 years.

Icon (2011) - 1 CD Best of - This volume in Universal’s Icon series concentrates on material from two essential Cat Stevens albums, 1970’s Tea for the Tillerman and 1971’s Teaser and the Firecat.