Tracey Ullman - They Don’t Know

That big '60s-era girl-group sound is what they were shooting for, and that's the way it sounds on every copy that's out there, vinyl or CD. It sounded spectacular on the air, though, and is still one of my favorite mid-'80s tracks.

The song is EQ'd weirdly, and the handful of versions I have vary from a little bass-shy (Just Can't Get Enough Vol. 12, Time-Life's Modern Rock Vol. 12 1980-1984, Like Omigod box) to a little treble-shy (Now 1983) to EXTREMELY treble-shy (EMI Australia's 5-CD box Eighties Complete Vol. 2, the original release of You Broke My Heart In 17 Places), to ear-splittingly maximized (the Disky 8-CD set More Greatest Hits Of The '80s) and one taken from vinyl (The A List).

I have some other lossless files and mp3 files from some other discs, and they're just as all-over-the-map.

My recommendations: Avoid the EMI Australia 5-CD set, the original You Broke My Heart, and the Disky 8-CD set for this track. (Not all of the tracks on the multi-disc compilations sound this bad.)

At the end of the day, the two Rhino discs are probably going to sounds as good as it's going to get. The Time-Life disc is a differently-EQ'd digital clone of Just Can't Get Enough. The 2-CD Now 1983 set (from 1993) is almost as good as the above three. Any of these four discs should work just fine for you.

Edited by crapfromthepast

This is great info; thanks guys! Sounds like (unsurprisingly) one of the Rhino CDs is going to be the way to go.