This week I’ve been reliving my youth by blasting out Dreamland by Black Box.

As I’m sure everyone knows there were scandals surrounding this album regarding lip-synching and lawsuits over uncredited vocals and samples.

You see, that girl on the album cover wasn’t really a singer despite being a member of Black Box.

She lip-synched in all the videos and promotional performances while the real singers went uncredited.

It later transpired that the real voice behind many of the songs on the album belonged to Martha Wash, who had sung the songs believing that she was performing demos.

(Martha Wash also got screwed over by C+C Music Factory, but that’s another story).

“Ride On Time” was a huge hit at the time, and it sampled Loleatta Holloway’s vocals from her song “Love Sensation”, which would have been fine, except that Black Box didn’t bother to credit the sample. After the ruse was discovered, Black Box re-recorded the track with the then-unknown Heather Small.

Despite these controversies I still love this album and play it often, especially in the summer.

The difference between listening to it in 1990 and listening to it in 2020 is that I now picture the real singers, not the lip-syncing girl in the videos.