SCORPIONS Release 2017 Version Of 'Follow Your Heart' From 'Born To Touch Your Feelings - Best Of Rock Ballads'

Legacy Recordings, a division of Sony Music Entertainment, will release “Born To Touch Your Feelings – Best Of Rock Ballads”, an essential anthology of new and classic recordings from the seminal German hard rock band SCORPIONS, on Friday, November 24.

“Born To Touch Your Feelings – Best Of Rock Ballads” will be available for digital streaming and download as well as a 1CD physical configuration.

Showcasing SCORPIONS‘ career-spanning command of the rock power ballad idiom they helped pioneer and engineer to perfection, “Born To Touch Your Feelings – Best Of Rock Ballads” includes definitive interpretations of some of the group’s most beloved rock anthems as well as the premiere of two brand-new SCORPIONS songs — “Melrose Avenue” and “Always Be With You” — and a scorching 2017 version of “Follow Your Heart”, the album’s first single, which can be streamed below.

“Always Be With You”, the brand new song by Rudolf Schenker, is a deeply emotional declaration of love and story of change written by the guitarist/composer shortly after the birth of his youngest son. “Melrose Avenue”, named after one of the most famous strips in Los Angeles, is the most recent song of Matthias Jabs, its music perfectly capturing the enchanting sense of life in California.

“Nowadays, ballads are the pinnacle of rock music,” says SCORPIONS frontman Klaus Meine. “If they’re well-written, they will go straight to the hearts of the fans.”

“Growing up, we didn’t really listen to Mozart or Haydn but rather to Elvis, THE ROLLING STONES or Little Richard,” says SCORPIONS founder Rudolf Schenker. “But still, the more serious kind of music is what we were influenced by starting at a very young age. There’s no denying that.”

The album features original artwork from photographer Ellen von Unwerth and production by Mikael Nord Andersson and Martin Hansen.

Forty years ago, the SCORPIONS song “Born To Touch Your Feelings” was released for the first time and it stands to this day as an abiding musical credo of Klaus Meine, Rudolf Schenker, Matthias Jabs, Pawel Maciwoda and Mikkey Dee.

“Born To Touch Your Feelings – Best Of Rock Ballads” track listing:

01. Born To Touch Your Feelings (“MTV Unplugged” Studio Edit)
02. Still Loving You (“Comeblack” Version)
03. Wind Of Change (“Comeblack” Version)
04. Always Somewhere (2015 Remaster)
05. Send Me An Angel (New Acoustic Version 2017)
06. Holiday (2015 Remaster)
07. Eye Of The Storm (Radio Edit)
08. When The Smoke Is Going Down (2015 Remaster)
09. Lonely Nights
10. Gypsy Life
11. House Of Cards (Single Edit)
12. The Best Is Yet To Come
13. When You Came Into My Life (“MTV Unplugged” Studio Edit)
14. Lady Starlight (2015 Remaster)
15. Follow Your Heart (New Full-Band Version 2017)
16. Melrose Avenue (New Song)
17. Always Be With You (New Song)

Meine revealed during last month’s SiriusXM Town Hall radio interview that the band’s record company “wanted us to come up with a couple of bonus tracks” for the best-of-ballads collection “and we went in the studio and everybody came up with great ideas… We just finished a recording session and listened to the first mixes and stuff, and it sounds pretty good. It’s gonna be a ‘best of ballads,’ but with those new tracks. And it’s gonna be a cool project.”

Regarding how the idea for the collection came about, Klaus said: “Sony Music approached us and said, ‘C’mon, guys. You have so many powerful songs. And we wanna put it together in some kind of compilation you guys never did before.'”

Meine added that while the SCORPIONS are known in the U.S.A. mostly for their harder-edged material, like “Rock You Like A Hurricane”, “in other parts of the world, SCORPIONS are very famous for the ballads, like ‘Still Loving You’ in France. And in Asia, they love the ballads, and in Russia, ‘Wind Of Change’ and all those songs are very powerful — equally as powerful as ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’ here,” he said. “So we talked about [doing] this. In different parts of the world, people like different types of music. So we can offer [a compilation that includes all the best of the softer songs].”

SCORPIONS‘ last release was 2015’s “Return To Forever”, partially comprising songs the band had in the vault from the ’80s. It was the final recorded appearance of SCORPIONS‘ longtime drummer James Kottak, who was dismissed from the band in September 2016 during his well-publicized his battle with alcoholism. He has since been replaced by MOTÖRHEAD drummer Mikkey Dee.

SCORPIONS were recently forced to cancel the remainder of their North American tour dates with MEGADETH after Meine was diagnosed with “severe laryngitis.” The singer was advised by a top throat specialist in Los Angeles to rest his voice or risk permanent vocal damage.