by Sharon MawerHaving finally succeeded with the album Pearls, the logical step was to release a successor Pearls II and producer Gus Dudgeon's services were retained to repeat the formula, but unlike the first volume which had utilised her five hit singles to date, Pearls II was a good idea but lacked the original songs to created that spark of magic a second time. The hits taken from Pearls II included the Gallagher & Lyle song, Our Love, Rod Stewart's Gasoline Alley and a strange choice of a cover version as one of the of the defining songs of the 1960s, Nights In White Satin which was given the Elkie Brooks treatment and despite the mystical swirling synthesizer sounds that formed the intro, never really worked and lost most of the power of the original. Even stranger for a choice of covers was the Pink Floyd classic Money from The Dark Side Of The Moon which was so associated with the original that even Elkie Brooks struggled to maintain a belief in the song which despite a rock guitar break in the middle did not suit her style at all. Pearls II reached no.5 but remained in the charts for less than a third of the time achieved by Pearls. A new direction was called for and it would be another four years before Elkie Brooks would find that path and trouble the upper regions of the chart again.