Viva by Bananarama

Viva is the tenth studio album recorded by the British vocal duo Bananarama. It was released by Fascination Records on 14 September 2009 in the UK. Viva is Bananarama's fifth album as a duo of Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward, and their first new album since 2005's Drama. Also, for the first time since 1992 both Sara and Keren started to play bass guitar on some tracks on the album. It contains the singles "Love Comes", "Love Don't Live Here" and other new tracks co-written by Dallin and Woodward, as well as three cover versions – "Rapture" (originally by iiO), "The Runner" (originally a 1979 hit for The Three Degrees) and "S-S-S-Single Bed"" (originally by Fox). The album had been originally conceived as a covers album, however the group changed their mind midway through the recording of the album and wrote original material for it. Apart from the three covers found on the physical CD release, four additional cover versions were made available on download format: "Run to You" (originally by Bryan Adams), "The Sounds of Silence" (originally by Simon and Garfunkel), "Voyage Voyage" (originally by Desireless) and "Tokyo Joe" (originally by Bryan Ferry). The latter two were also issued as b-sides to the vinyl releases of their single "Love Comes." Three of these four bonus tracks were only available until the album's release date.The album charted on the UK Albums Chart at number 87, the band's fourth consecutive album to miss the top 40. In 2019, a deluxe expanded edition,including b-sides and remixes, was released by Cherry Red Records on double CD.