Dolly Parton #41: Little Sparrow (2001)

After the critical success of The Grass is Blue, it was probably a no-brainer for Dolly Parton and co. to make another bluegrass record. But they didn’t feel the need to rush, and so the follow-up Little Sparrow, was released into the world two years later. It made for another critical success for Dolly even bigger than the last, and became a decent hit on the country album charts, making it to #12, even cracking the top 100 on the pop charts. The album capped off its prestige run by netting Dolly a Grammy for best female vocal performance for “Shine.” Whatever the bluegrass traditionalists thought, it seemed that Dolly was very, very good at making this kind of music. But does Little Sparrow manage to outdo its predecessor?

Well, to my ears, it does it pretty much every respect. The Grass is Blue was a very good album, but Little Sparrow manages to take the same formula and achieve greatness. I’m not sure why this is, if it comes down to song selection or performance or what, since the production and sound are very similar, even carrying over some of the same players like Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, and Alison Krauss. There’s a level of confidence to the whole thing, a certain je ne sais quoi that permeates and takes the album to another level. Maybe Dolly was just feeling more secure after The Grass is Blue was considered a success, comfortable in the knowledge that there was an audience hungry to hear her take on traditional sounds. In any case, she and her crack team of players knocked it out of the park.

Little Sparrow has a similar makeup to its predecessor, consisting of about half Dolly originals and half covers from the worlds of country, traditional, and even rock. It kicks off with the title track, an elegantly haunting minor-key ballad with the sort of English folk flair that illustrates the connection between European and Appalachian traditions. It begins with Dolly’s voice unaccompanied, spinning her tale of a spurned lover represented by the titular, fragile bird, before layering in harmony vocals, guitar, fiddle, mandolin and banjo. The lyrics add to the sense of ancient balladry, using lines like “all ye maidens, hear my warning / never trust the hearts of men.” It’s a bewitching track and a great way to kick off the album.

We then get one of the album’s best and most unexpected moments: a bluegrass cover of Collective Soul’s 90s alternative rock radio staple “Shine.” Translating the song’s distorted rock riffage into fiddles and banjos seems gimmicky, but works amazingly well here. It follows the original template pretty closely, turning its rock breakdown into a full-on bluegrass raver. Dolly’s done the “unexpectedly good bluegrass cover of a rock song” thing before, like her take on REO Speedwagon’s “Time For Me to Fly” back on White Limozeen, and it’s pretty much always delightful.

We then move through her take on the classic country tune “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby,” a song performed by everyone from the Louvin Brothers to Alison Krauss to Dolly herself back in her Porter Wagoner days. She turns it into a traditional bluegrass ballad with a slight western swing vibe with a robust string intro. It’s followed by a slower version of “My Blue Tears,” a Dolly tune from way back on Coat of Many Colors, transformed from a straightforward close harmony ditty into a lush, mournful ballad. She makes another bluegrass raver out of “Seven Bridges Road,” originally written by outlaw country icon Steve Young and later covered by every music critic’s favorite band, The Eagles.

The album’s midpoint goes through a new Dolly song “Bluer Pastures,” the Restless Heart tune “A Tender Lie,” and a jaunty take on the Cole Porter classic “I Get a Kick Out of You,” before we get a trio of stunning Dolly tunes starting with “Mountain Angel.” A nearly seven-minute Appalachian story song, Dolly lays out a sort of origin story for the town witch, spinning a tragic tale of a once-beautiful woman left devastated and alone after her lover leaves her and her baby dies. She writes it all as hearsay, full of “they say”s, as if this is a tale passed around from mouth to mouth. It lends a painful dignity to the kinds of characters that exist in local legends the world over, the scary old hag who everyone avoids and assumes is in league with the devil, revealed to actually be a normal person driven mad by grief.

After that emotional devastation, Dolly thankfully lightens up on “Marry Me,” an uptempo gospel-tinged bluegrass number featuring clawhammer banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and guitar. There’s an appealing looseness to the track, giving it the feel of a party or a family jam session, the players hooting and hollering for each other. The celebration doesn’t last too long though, as “Marry Me” is followed by a new take on Dolly’s classic, even more devastating ballad “Down From Dover.” If you recall from way back on her 1970 album The Fairest of Them All, “Down From Dover” tells the tale of a young woman vainly waiting on the father of her unborn child to return, left exiled by her family, her hope fading with each passing day. Eventually the baby’s stillborn and it’s clear her lover’s never coming back, leaving her alone and devastated. It was absolutely crushing back then, and it’s still crushing over three decades later. The years have seemed to do little to diminish Dolly’s voice, but she does bring a slight edge of weariness to this new version, as if she’s resigned to her fate or recounting it years later.

The album shifts into a more reflective, spiritual gear in its closing tracks, with the sparse “The Beautiful Lie” and a take on the old Christian Hymn “In the Sweet By and By.” Dolly underlines the Celtic/Appalachian connection by bringing in members of Irish folk band Clannad on the latter track, particularly Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh delivering an Irish language verse. We end on a brief reprise of “Little Sparrow” rendered ethereal and wordless, suggesting a cyclical nature to the album. You might want to put it on repeat too.

Dolly Parton #38: Hungry Again (1998)

One look at the cover art for Dolly Parton’s Hungry Again–Dolly dressed plainly in overalls and a henley, her signature blonde bouffant pulled down into a braid, sitting on a porch swing–you might assume that this is a more stripped-down, back to basics affair. And as it turns out, Dolly took that idea to heart more than you might imagine.

It seems hard to fathom now, when her status in pop culture is evergreen, but there was a time where Dolly was in danger of being left behind. As the 90s wore on, a whole new generation of country stars took the spotlight, and legacy acts like Dolly and others were largely left off country radio, playing to their old fans but not really capturing too many new ones. This of course goes double for women, who are largely thought to be past their prime once they reach the ripe old age of 30.

Finding herself without a label after the closing of Rising Tide’s Nashville branch, Dolly decamped to her lake cottage outside Nashville as well as her fabled Tennessee mountain home in Sevierville to write songs away from the pressures of Music Row. This creative monasticism seemed to work for Dolly, emerging afterwards with upwards of 35 new songs that she described at the time as some of her best ever. She’d managed to recapture a spark she’d felt in the early days of her career; Hungry Again wasn’t just a title, it was an ethos.

Deciding that the record needed to remain a family affair, Dolly produced it herself with her cousin Richie Owens, recording it in his basement studio with his band Shinola. The result is easily Dolly’s most stripped down album since the 70s, if not ever. It was well-received by critics as a return to form, though not met with a ton of enthusiasm from the record buying public, making it as high as #23 on the country albums chart and its first single “Honky Tonk Songs” peaking at #74. This didn’t seem to bother Dolly much, in fact it may have been intentional. Making the record seemed creatively and spiritually fulfilling for her, so what if it didn’t catch on among the younger demographic?

Any album made up of all Dolly originals gets an automatic bump in the rankings for me, and Hungry Again is a pretty strong batch of songs delivered with a minimum of fuss. Lyrically it’s all pretty well-worn territory for Dolly at this point, with songs about losing love, struggling to let go, taking some jerk to task, and of course, loving Jesus. That said, few songwriters can find as many ways to express those universal human experiences as Dolly, so it’s still a pleasure regardless. Maybe it’s because I’m so used to the gleaming sheen of professional studio productions at this point, but the mix on Hungry Again sounds surprisingly murky at times, not nearly as crisp as her previous work. I think this, too, is by design; these songs were mostly recorded in a home studio, after all. It might be the most high-profile bedroom pop album since Paul and Linda McCartney’s Ram.

There’s plenty to like throughout Hungry Again, starting with the title track, a 3/4 time acoustic country waltz where Dolly’s narrator implores their partner to help recapture the spark of their early days. Things were less comfortable, but their love had a passion that has naturally cooled with age; not necessarily in a bad way, but she misses that early fire. It’s a relatable sentiment for anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship, and having had similar conversations with my partner recently, I certainly connected to it. The first single “Honky Tonk Songs” is also a good one, one of the few occasions where Dolly’s band does something that could be described as rocking. It’s a bluesy, honky tonk shuffle where Dolly’s narrator tries drinking to forget her sorrow, turning to classic country singers like Merle Haggard and Hank Williams to ease the pain.

“Blue Valley Songbird” is another really good track, a story song that feels like one of Dolly’s 60s or 70s classics, though maybe slightly less bleak than “Down From Dover” or “Gypsy, Joe, and Me.” There’s still darkness to be found in Dolly’s tale of a girl who finds solace and salvation in music, using it as a means to escape her abusive father, who “used and abused her mind and her body.” Dolly thankfully doesn’t fill in the blanks on what that means, but even when her subject finds success, her father still haunts her: “She writes her letter back home to her mama / in care of the preacher in town / they’re sacred to her so she reads them at church / and so her daddy cannot track her down.” It’s a gutting moment, and a reminder that even though she escaped home, she may never be free of her pain, the same pain that informs her music. Dolly definitely softened her approach the more famous she got, but it’s nice to know she can still turn out a heartbreaker when she wants to.

Dolly always saves some of her best spirit for her worship songs, and she turns in a couple great ones here with “When Jesus Comes Calling For Me” and “Shine On.” The former has a sort of unique sound in Dolly’s world, with a slow, thumping beat that almost recalls 90s R&B, paired with wailing harmonica courtesy of cousin Richie. Dolly leads us in with a spoken word intro, framing the song as her recollection of an old man waiting for his time to come so he can be with his family again. There’s no sorrow to it, only joy at the prospect of awaiting his holy reward. “Shine On” is the album’s closer, a classic southern spiritual rendered mostly a capella with a gospel chorus, accompanied only by quiet guitar. The song was recorded in the House of Prayer, the Sevierville church where her grandfather preached and where she attended service in her youth.

Hungry Again finds Dolly on sure footing with probably her most confident set of songs in years. Other artists of her generation railed against their lack of representation on the radio, but Dolly was gracious about it, and I think this album proves that her talent cannot be denied. Country music needed her much more than she needed them, anyway.

Dolly Parton #22: Dolly, Dolly, Dolly (1980)

The 80s have dawned, and Dolly Parton wasted very little time planting her foot in the new decade with Dolly, Dolly, Dolly, released in April of that year. The album continued her hot streak, landing two #1 singles on the country chart and topping out at #7 country and #71 pop. A bit of a decline albums-wise, but still pretty good. And yet, despite the triple dose of Dolly in the album’s title, Dolly herself is actually a bit less present on this album; it’s her first album to feature no self-penned songs since her Porter Wagoner tribute. Instead, songwriting duties have been shopped out to a number of hitmaking professionals from the pop and country worlds, who to their credit seem to understand their client pretty well. Dolly, Dolly, Dolly is very much in the vein of Dolly’s current shiny pop phase, with all the big budget studio goodies the early 80s has to offer.

With no Dolly-penned songs, there’s an inescapable air of cash-in to this album, and it ends up feeling not quite as satisfying as her other work. That said, it’s still as admirably sung and played as ever, there are some enjoyable tunes threaded throughout, and its sonic variety means it hardly ever feels boring or repetitive. The album opens with “Starting Over Again,” a piano and synth ballad penned by disco queen Donna Summer and her husband Bruce Sudano; it’s a somber divorce anthem wherein its recently separated couple struggle to adapt to life without each other after so many years together, their children grown, themselves firmly in middle age. It doesn’t offer any easy resolutions; by the end, the two are just as unsure as they were at the start, though it also manages to highlight the disparities between men and women, where “he’s scheming big deals with one of his friends / while she sits at home / just sorting out pieces / of leftover memories / from 30 odd years.” Summer and Sudano understood the assignment pretty well, penning a tune that Dolly herself might have come up with.

From there, the album is very much a product of the early 80s, with bright danceable pop like “You’re the Only One I Ever Needed” and “Fool for Your Love,” along with slow-burn piano ballads like “Even a Fool Would Let Go” or “I Knew You When,” the latter written by “The Piña Colada Song’s” Rupert Holmes, who splits the difference between a classic old school ballad and something presaging his turn to musical theatre. She does mix it up a few times in fun ways, particularly on the 6/8 time acoustic country love song “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You” and the updated doo wop shuffle of “Say Goodnight.” “Sweet Agony” is a bit of an odd duck, with skronky synth bass over vaguely reggae guitars and hand percussion, creating a strutting rhythm, and the album ends with an honest to goodness rock song on “Packin’ it Up,” as Dolly sings an ode to the joy of hitting the town with her man over crunchy guitar riffage.

Dolly, Dolly, Dolly has a bit of an “all things to all people” kind of feel, throwing a lot of ideas at the wall to see what sticks, though as usual, Dolly’s talent as a performer carries the day. She commits to all of it equally, and fits surprisingly well into each style. It can’t help but feel a bit like a transitional album, one hedging its bets in the face of a new decade, but there’s still a lot of fun to be had. Gary Klein’s production is pristine in the way that only late 70s/early 80s studio pop can be, and it helps that Dolly’s band has ringers like the MGs’ Steve Cropper and Little Feat’s Fred Tackett, alongside great session players like Tom Scott, Abraham Laboriel, and Nathan East. Dolly was on the cusp of another breakthrough in her career, poised to break out into film later that year, so maybe this album was meant to remind everyone what she could do musically…as if we needed any reminding.

Dolly Parton #19: Here You Come Again (1977)

New Harvest…First Gathering was undeniably a huge shift in Dolly’s career, but I think there’s a very strong case to be made that Here You Come Again, her second album of 1977, is the moment when the Dolly Parton we know and love truly arrived. It’s right there in the album cover; three shots of a smiling Dolly in jeans and a tied off shirt, her hair bigger than ever. There’s something kind of silly, almost campy, about that cover, which makes for a pretty good encapsulation of Dolly’s image: playful, a bit corny, with an exaggerated femininity that’s a bit like a living cartoon.

Dolly had albums and singles cross over to the pop charts before, but Here You Come Again is her biggest pop success by a wide margin up to this point, making it as high as #20 on the pop album charts. It’s title track made it as high as #3 on the pop singles charts, and its second single “Two Doors Down” didn’t do too bad either, making it to #19. It netted Dolly her first Grammy for best female country vocal performance on its title track, and was the first Dolly album to go platinum. It did pretty darn well on the country charts as well, netting her another #1 album and multiple #1 singles. If there was any lingering doubt that Dolly had crossover appeal, this album should’ve surely put that to rest.

The album itself follows New Harvest’s trajectory away from traditional country sounds, into a realm that was more pop friendly but still with a southern twang. The title track is one of Dolly’s most enduring songs, a piano-led ballad about an old flame returning to the singer’s life just as she was about to get over him, finding her helpless to resist being pulled back into the same cycle. The Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil-penned tune is a marvel of efficient pop songwriting, selling its central dilemma with a minimum of words (the simple chorus–“here you come again / and here I go” is masterful). It’s one of the rare Dolly hits that she didn’t write herself, but it certainly seems like something she could’ve come up with.

That’s one of the downsides to Dolly’s pop transition: she takes a bit of a backseat in the role of songwriter, contributing only four of the album’s ten songs. Her compositions are a bit of a mixed bag; in the good column: “It’s All Wrong, But it’s All Right,” a ballad where Dolly’s narrator communicates a deep need for connection, making a booty call that she hopes might lead to something more. “God’s Coloring Book” is another of Dolly’s songs in awe of the beauty of nature, similar to stuff like “Early Morning Breeze,” though with a slightly less beguiling melody.

She also contributes the album’s other big single “Two Doors Down,” a refreshing post-breakup song where the narrator chooses joy over sorrow, going to a party down the hall and meeting a new man. Musically, it’s a bit of an odd beast, with country touches and horns that call to mind R&B, but with an odd syncopated rhythm that almost verges on reggae (or I guess cod reggae in this case). Interestingly enough, the version you’re likely to hear these days is not the original version Dolly recorded, which leaned a bit more on the country side of country-pop. Dolly later went back and re-recorded a more polished pop take, and all subsequent releases of the album feature the later version replacing the original. Evidently this was done to differentiate it from Zella Lehr’s version, which had been a decent country hit. Whichever version you hear, it’s a pretty good song.

In the bad column is thankfully just one song: the utterly baffling “Me and Little Andy.” The subject matter isn’t all that unusual for her; it’s a saccharine ballad about a little girl and her puppy who show up at the narrator’s house one night, looking for a new home. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Dolly song if they didn’t get one little bit of happiness before dying by the song’s end. No, what’s baffling is Dolly’s choice to sing the girl’s lines in an exaggerated little kid voice that takes the melodrama so far over the top it ends up being inadvertently hilarious. Any pathos gets sucked right out when Dolly starts signing “ain’t you got no gingerbread / ain’t you go no candy” in a voice that’s just about one step away from “goo goo ga ga.”

“Me and Little Andy” aside, there’s a higher degree of open sexuality on this album, from the desperate come-on of “It’s All Wrong, but it’s All Right” to “Two Doors Down’s” narrator hooking up with someone, to “As Soon as I Touched Him,” which isn’t overtly about sex but sure as hell sounds like it. Even on the Bobby Goldsboro-penned story song “Cowgirl & the Dandy,” it’s heavily implied that its two mismatched characters got it on. I’m not sure if a line like “now there’s a little bit of class in this old cabin / and there’s a little country in the dandy” is supposed to be a double entendre, but it’s not hard to make that leap.

Dolly’s sexuality is an interesting subject all its own; despite her exaggerated features and self-described inspiration from “the town trollop,” Dolly herself always comes off rather chaste, married to the same man for practically her whole life. It’s a sexuality that invites us to project our own desires onto it, rather than anything that comes directly from her. In any case, Here You Come Again proved once and for all that Dolly had the goods to be a pop star, and her career just keeps going from here. We’re ever further from the girl from the mountains of Tennessee, and the transition from country star to bonafide cultural icon really kicks off here.

Beatles Solo Albums #31: Bad Boy (1978)

After the disastrous reception to the disco-leaning direction of Ringo the 4th, Ringo and his cowriter Vini Poncia tried to course correct, returning to the comfortable soul-pop sounds of his previous records. Rather than write most of the songs themselves as they did on the last album, the duo mostly went to covers, turning in a couple of originals. The resulting album did moderately better than Ringo the 4th, making it to #129 on the US charts but still not charting in the UK.

Meanwhile, Ringo had descended into heavy drinking and partying, putting more energy into his hedonistic LA lifestyle than into his music. Since around the time of Goodnight Vienna, Ringo’s partying increased as his desire for artistic productivity went down, a decline reflected in the dwindling interest in his solo records. Moreover, even when the guy did put out a record, it seemed all anyone wanted to talk about was whether or not the Beatles were getting back together. Ringo put on an amiable face, but it was starting to get to him by the mid-70s.

Bad Boy isn’t a bad album per se; it contains the same level of professionalism we’ve seen from other Ringo records, but you can tell Ringo’s heart isn’t really in it at this point. Musically the album feels of a piece with Ringo or Rotogravure, but Ringo’s vocals here have a desultory quality, a sense of wanting to get them over with (as evidenced by the album’s quick recording). Say what you will about Ringo the 4th (like that it wasn’t very good), but Ringo felt committed to his drunken lothario persona on that album, delivering his vocals with gusto. This is probably due to the fact that, from the sounds of it, he didn’t have to work very hard to fit into that role at this point in his life.

Given that this is a Ringo album, it’s not as if there are no enjoyable songs here. His take on the title track, a doo wop classic covered by everyone from Sha Na Na to Buster Poindexter, is laid back fun, with the highly enjoyable refrain “I’m a bad boyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoy.” It’s hard not to smile when you hear that. He turns in a solid version of another Allen Toussaint song, “Lipstick Traces (On a Cigarette),” and his cover of the Small Faces ballad “Tonight” is pretty good too, showing a little bit of the vulnerability that I’m sure he was feeling at this point.

It doesn’t all work very well, unfortunately; his take on the Supremes’ immortal “Where Did Our Love Go” lands with a thud, with a halfhearted vocal from Ringo and some odd, squonky synths. The final song, a piano-heavy ballad called “A Man Like Me,” is awkward and sappy, supposedly taken from the children’s album Scouse the Mouse, wherein Ringo played a Liverpudlian rodent, with “man” swapped in for “mouse” in the song’s lyrics. Maybe it worked better originally, but having not heard Scouse the Mouse, I can’t say, though I am extremely curious. Interestingly enough, the story was written and narrated by Dr. Loomis himself, Donald Pleasance. I never thought I’d be writing about Ringo and Donald Pleasance in the same article, but there you go.

It seems that, after the fairly relentless pace of his 70s output since Ringo, the lack of enthusiasm was finally getting to Ringo by this point. It would be three years before he released another album, and his output slowed considerably through the 80s and into the 90s, releasing only two albums in the 80s and only three in the 90s. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Beatles Solo Albums #30: London Town (1978)

Paul and company didn’t waste much time after the massive success of Wings at the Speed of Sound and the Wings Across America tour, jumping back into the studio in 1977 to record a few singles, including the similarly mega-successful “Mull of Kintyre,” which at one point was the biggest selling single in UK history. Shortly after the singles were recorded, Linda got pregnant with their son James, and Joe English and Jimmy McCullough left the band, bringing Wings back to its Band on the Run era trio of Paul, Linda, and the ride-or-die Denny Laine.

The band took some time off from touring, finding themselves with some free time to work on their follow up album. Recorded partly at Abbey Road and partly on a luxury yacht in the Virgin Islands (because sure), London Town was finally released in 1978 after a lengthy gestation. The album sold well, as all Paul albums had done for quite some time, but was met with indifference by the press and didn’t have the staying power of some of his previous work. It seems that critics weren’t really in the mood for an album that could be considered even more low-key than Wings at the Speed of Sound, if that’s even possible.

In a way I’m glad we only have one Wings album left after this, because I feel like I’m running out of ways to say that these albums are lightweight but enjoyable in their own laid back way. It’s not held in very high regard these days, but I dunno y’all…I liked it. I’m on record as enjoying Paul’s music even when it feels insubstantial, and I think London Town is a really enjoyable, if a bit overlong, album. The melodies and instrumentation are so appealing, I don’t really care if it falls into the same comfy domestic mode of his previous works, it’s a treat for the ears, with a few stylistic tricks that make it ever so slightly more ambitious than Speed of Sound. It’s not a carefully crafted opus like this trio’s previous collection, but there’s plenty to make it worth hearing.

The album kicks off with the title track, a gentle organ-led urban fantasia with lyrics that feel like a more surreal version of “Penny Lane,” as Paul takes us through a range of strange characters on his “imaginary street.” “Cafe on the Left Bank” takes us from London to Paris, as Paul takes in the scene of a “tiny crowd of Frenchmen ’round a TV shop / watching Charles de Gaulle make a speech” and “English speaking people drinking German beer / talking far too loud for their ears.” You can almost picture yourself sitting at one of those outdoor Parisian cafes watching the world go by. This leads into the lovely acoustic ballad “I’m Carrying,” with a beguiling, hypnotic melody. It almost feels half-finished in the way of some of McCartney’s songs a while back, but in a way that pulls you in and doesn’t let go.

The midpoint of side 1 gets a little loose, with a few minute-ish long song sketches culminating in the almost unbearably precious “Children Children,” where Denny Laine sings about fairies and waterfalls and shit. It recovers with “Girlfriend,” a track whose pop hooks are so irresistible even Michael Jackson had to take a crack at it on his album Off the Wall from the following year.

Side 2 opens with “With a Little Luck,” the album’s first single, a synth-led ballad that veers uncomfortably close to 80s sitcom theme song territory for my taste. It’s followed by “Famous Groupies,” an extremely silly tongue-in-cheek song supposedly inspired by real famous groupies the Plaster Caster, who were well-known in the rock world at this point. Paul sings of their exploits in a cheekily exaggerated accent, detailing the ways that these two can bring the music world to its knees. I really like “Deliver Your Children,” a driving folk/gospel song with a terrific melody and jangling guitar, and the 50s-esque rock of “Name and Address,” where Paul adopts an Elvis-like tone to his voice–fitting considering The King had just passed away not long before.

The album ends with two songs that get surprisingly into English/Celtic folk-rock territory, not unlike something you’d hear from Fairport Convention or Steeleye Span. “Don’t Let it Bring You Down” has the downtuned, minor key vibe of an English folk ballad, augmented with flutes and electric guitar, and album closer “Morse Moose and the Grey Goose” transcends its ridiculous title to become a fascinating fusion of prog rock and sea shanty. I wonder if Paul was feeling patriotic at this point in his career, with these and “Mull of Kintyre,” with its prominent featuring of bagpipes, calling back to ancient UK musical traditions. I’m not sure, but it’s pretty cool whatever the reason, and adds colors that I don’t think Paul had used before up to this point.

London Town isn’t on the list of all-time Paul classics, but I think maybe it should be; it’s got some great stuff on it, and is definitely one I could see myself putting on the turntable someday, letting its warm vibes and ear-grabbing melodies fill the room. There’s probably a better, tighter album in here if you cut out some of the fluff and the stuff that doesn’t work as well, but there’s a shaggy charm to it as-is too.

Elton John #25: Made in England (1995)

In the interim between Duets and Made in England, Elton John made another huge leap in his career.  The soundtrack for the 1994 Disney film The Lion King, for which Elton had written the original songs with lyricist Tim Rice, became a huge success in its own right, having sold somewhere on the order of 10 million copies as of today and reaching Diamond status with the RIAA.  It also cemented Elton as not only a successful recording artist in his own right, but also as a capable writer for films and musicals; he and Rice would collaborate once again on the stage musical Aida and the 2000 animated film The Road to El Dorado.  

Which is all to say that Elton didn’t really have to keep making albums of his own–he could’ve raked in piles of cash writing for films and called it a day.  But thankfully, he’s just too much of a pro for that, and so he soldiered on, releasing Made in England in 1995.

The album’s cover art, a simple photo of Elton smiling softly in a turtleneck and tasteful round glasses, might lead you to think that this is another “back to basics” record, stripping away the excess and delivering a straightforward set of songs, but that’s not really the case.  It’s very much in his stately, adult-contemporary mode, but I think it’s a more satisfying set of songs than his other 90s output has been so far, with some enjoyably throwback tracks and a sharp, focused set of lyrics from Bernie Taupin.

Made in England also finds Elton re-teaming with Paul Buckmaster, whose string arrangements added drama to most of his 70s albums, lending his usual orchestral sweep to a few of the tracks.  It serves as a great reminder that this guy really was one of the secret weapons on Elton’s early work; his string additions here work beautifully, particularly on “Belfast,” where they subtly call out to Irish fiddle music and evoke the song’s setting.

The album also features some of Bernie’s best lyrics in quite some time, in my opinion.  The opening track, the bombastic ballad “Believe,” starts out pretty simply, with Elton singing “I believe in love, it’s all we got / love has no boundaries, costs nothing to touch,” but it gets more interesting towards the end of the song when Elton sings “without love, I’d have no anger / I wouldn’t believe in the right to stand here.”  It’s an interesting line because it shows that an expression of love doesn’t always have to be soft and sweet and tender, sometimes it’s righteous fucking indignation.  I’m not sure if Bernie is writing towards Elton’s now-out sexuality, but a line like that could easily be read that way, that love is the reason equality is worth fighting for.

The title track also features some interesting lyrics around that same theme.  It sounds like Elton angrily laying down the gauntlet, singing about childhood violence and neglect, saying to those who would be scandalized by his recent coming out, “you had a scent for scandal, well here’s my middle finger / I had forty years of pain and nothing to cling to.”  Having been forced to stay in the closet his whole life up to now, living his truth is liberating, and anyone with a problem can just piss off.

It seems that the upbringing that caused him pain also made him tough: “If you’re made in England, you’re built to last / You can still say ‘homo’ and everybody laughs / But the joke’s on you, you never read the song / They all think they know but they all got it wrong.”  I think you can read this as Elton taunting the haters, saying it was all there if you paid attention.  Given that Elton’s sexuality seems very, very clear with the benefit of hindsight, this is understandable.

There’s some really solid stuff on here, from the aforementioned tracks to the surprisingly chipper “Pain” and the stirring “Belfast,” about The Troubles in Northern Ireland and the resilience of its people.  I also really enjoyed “Please,” a bright 60s-style throwback with jangling acoustic guitar and ringing Rickenbacker-style electrics making it sound like some lost early Beatles track.

The album wraps up with the sweet “Blessed,” an ode to an imagined child and a promise to give them the best life possible, should they arrive.  It seems like the wishing paid off, since Elton now has two sons with his husband David.

Speaking of David, the album is dedicated to him, and it seems like there’s no better way to pay tribute to a new love than with an album of songs that is unapologetic about its truth.  Elton’s got nothing to hide anymore, and you can tell it’s really damn liberating.

Elton John #17: Too Low for Zero (1983)

I was very eager to listen to Too Low for Zero for a couple of reasons.  I’d read about it being widely hailed as Elton’s “comeback album;” after a few years of disappointing sales and lukewarm reception, this was Elton’s first album since Blue Moves to feature a full set of lyrics by Bernie Taupin, and the first since Captain Fantastic to feature his 70s backing band of Davy Johnstone, Dee Murray, and Nigel Olsson on all the songs (all the collaborators had worked together on a more limited basis in the intervening years, but this was their first time being a core unit again in quite some time).

And wouldn’t you know it, the approach seemed to work.  Too Low for Zero was Elton’s best-selling album in years, reaching platinum status and featuring a couple of hit singles.  It also earned strong reviews, with many critics labeling it as a return to form.  It seemed that Elton’s years of searching for something else were over, and his true friends were the ones that had been there for him all along, and also there’s no place like home, etc.

So with all that expectation, I was geeked to give the album a listen.  So is it the thrilling return to Elton’s 70s heyday that I was hoping for?  Well, yes and no.

It’s clear that these guys are having a blast playing together as a band again; the performances are tight and punchy, even on the slower numbers, and Elton’s vocals are never less than fully committed.  The songwriting is pretty strong across the board as well, with Taupin largely avoiding the poetic obfuscation that had him labeled as pretentious in the early days, favoring more emotionally direct lyrics.  Overall, the songwriting has “mature” written all over it, without a lot of the camp factor that defined earlier albums.

But it’s not entirely back to basics; the album has a very contemporary sound that marks it as a product of the 80s, with a few songs bordering on straight-up synth pop.  Rather than feeling pandering, it’s actually a good look for Elton and the band, sounding of-its-time without being too dated to our modern ears.

Despite the triumphant reunion aspect of the album’s recording, the songs themselves are some of Elton’s most unsettled.  Malaise, dispair, anger, and longing permeate the album, with Taupin’s lyrics detailing breakups, estrangement, loss, and religion in often unadorned detail.  Just look at the whole first side of the album, from the marital strife of opener “Cold as Christmas (in the Middle of the Year)” to the defiant kiss-off “I’m Still Standing,” followed by the gloomy new wave of the title track and the skepticism of faith on “Religion,” ending with the majestically plaintive “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues.”  It’s a wonderfully depressive suite of songs (a weird thing to say, I know) that wraps its heartache in plenty of catchy melodies.

About “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues:” it was the album’s first single and another big hit for Elton, his best in several years, and it really is such a killer song.  The lyrics are emotionally accessible, with Elton singing to an absent lover and wishing they could be together, not doing much beyond enjoying each other’s company (in more ways than one if ya know what I mean).  Also, during the song’s harmonica solo, I found myself thinking, whoever’s playing that has Stevie Wonder’s style down pat, only to find out there’s a good reason for that: that’s Stevie freakin’ Wonder himself!

Side 2 opens with “Crystal,” a slinky synth-led ballad about two friends pulled apart by the object of their mutual affections, before lightening up a bit with a pair of full-steam-ahead rockers, “Kiss the Bride” and “Whipping Boy.”  They work pretty well, especially the former, with lyrics that read like the inner monologue of Dustin Hoffman’s character at the end of The Graduate, the narrator longing to take action and reclaim the love he lost years ago.

The latter musters a little bit of the trashy barroom rock of earlier songs like “Dirty Little Girl” or “Slave,” with the narrator run ragged by a much younger lover.  Some of the lyrics get a little cringey, particularly the last stanza, where Elton sings “You’re dirty, but you’re worth it / But you’re way, you’re way too young / I could do time if they found out / Look out, San Quentin here I come.”  I guess it’s better than nothing that he’s aware it’s creepy, even if he’s clearly not going to quit…or something?  I’m sure it’s all meant to be a gag like some of their early transgressive songs, but its inclusion doesn’t really gel with what amounts to a pretty somber album overall.

The album ends with “One More Arrow,” an earnest ballad with lyrics about a fallen friend who died too young, closing on a moving, reflective note that throws the more domestic squabbling of most of the album’s songs into sharp relief.

I was fully prepared to love Too Low for Zero, and while it didn’t quite live up to my probably too-high expectations, it’s a strong and engaging album with some terrific songs that prove this songwriting duo still had plenty of juice.  It seems obvious to wonder why this group of collaborators, who have such great chemistry together, would’ve stopped working together for any length of time, but perhaps their separation was needed for the album to turn out the way it did.  It feels like the Platonic ideal of what an 80s Elton John album could be, with strong songs and a production that feels contemporary without being beholden to feeling trendy.  With their creative partnership revitalized, I can’t wait to see where the band goes from here!  Let me just look up some reviews for the next few albums.

Oh.  Oh dear.  Why do I do this to myself?

 

Elton John #15: The Fox (1981)

Elton John continues erasing the taste of Victim of Love from our collective mouths with The Fox, an album that follows in 21 at 33‘s footsteps of safe but respectable pop/rock.  It also represents, for me at least, a slight step forward from the last album, taking a few more risks and being a mostly stronger set of songs overall.

Things start off pretty business as usual with a pair of John/Gary Osborne collaborations: the danceable pop of opening your heart to others on “Breaking Down Barriers” and a cynical takedown of unscrupulous journalists on the strutting soul number “Heart in the Right Place.”  The latter features some enjoyably acerbic lyrics from Osborne that stand out from his more typical array of love songs.  

The Fox largely keeps the same array of collaborators as the last album, with Osborne writing most of the lyrics along with four by Bernie Taupin and one by Tom Robinson.  As usual, most of the best songs are the ones with Taupin’s lyrics, like the rough and tumble travelogue “Just Like Belgium” and the staunchly political “Facsist Faces,” where repressive views are able to hide under the guise of patriotism (gee, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).

Their fourth effort, the album’s closing title track, is less successful, with a stirring country-gospel anthem weighed down by some of Taupin’s most overwritten lyrics like “yes I am the fox / a fascinating cross / of sharp as a whip and tough as an ox.”  A lot of people accuse Taupin of being overly pretentious or arty, and while I’ve mostly found his lyrics exceptional, I can see why they’d feel that way when listening to “The Fox.”  That said, it’s still an enjoyable song, buoyed by John’s gift for melody and some lovely harmonica work by Mickey Raphael, whose mournful harp stood in beautifully for a horn section on Willie Nelson’s American Songbook collection Stardust (let this be an unsolicited plug for Stardust if you’ve never heard it before).

There’s some interesting stuff outside of the John/Taupinsongs as well, like “Nobody Wins,” a cover of a French song called “J’Veux de la Tendresse” with new English lyrics by Osborne.  It’s the album’s most overtly synth-pop song, and it actually works pretty well, complemented by John’s affected, dramatic vocal, injecting a bit of the winking camp sensibility he had deployed so well on early albums.

The penultimate track “Elton’s Song,” with lyrics by Tom Robinson, is a sweet and sad ballad of teenage yearning which, while never explicitly stated, could easily be directed at another man.  It’s alluded to, as the narrator watches his beloved “playing pool” (a typically masculine-coded activity) and dealing with people who “think [he’s] mad…think it isn’t real.”  This could be interpreted as adults in his life writing off his feelings as teenage puppy love, or denying his true sexuality, and John and Robinson play it pretty coy as to the answer.  Of course, even despite the ambiguity, plenty of people read it as a straight ahead gay confessional, and it was banned from the radio in several countries.

John also flexes his compositional muscles on the “Carla/Etude”/”Fanfare”/”Chloe” suite, beginning with a lengthy instrumental section before segueing into a love song to a long-suffering partner whose continued devotion is required but not necessarily fully reciprocated by the narrator.  It’s a nice little bit of Baroque pop that predicts his later forays into musical theatre and film scores.

The Fox is pretty comfortable musical terrain for John and company, delivering the kind of pop songcraft you’d expect from him with a little bit of playful experimentation thrown in for good measure.  It didn’t sell very well, and isn’t thought of all that fondly today, but it has plenty to make it a worthwhile listen.

 

Elton John #11: Blue Moves (1976)

After the frantic pace of writing, recording, and touring that Elton John and company had undergone for pretty much the past six straight years, the languid Blue Moves feels like the artist forcing himself–and us–to slow down.  Stretched across two discs, with most of its songs in the five-to-seven-minute range, it’s a marked contrast from the tight, pop-focused albums he’d been recording for the better part of the decade.

Blue Moves was mostly poorly received by the music press at the time, with writers criticizing its length, pacing, and its seeming self-seriousness.  While its esteem has grown slightly over the years, it’s still not held up as one of his best.  The album marked the end of John’s #1 record hot streak, but still sold fairly well, reaching #3 on the American charts, likely carried there on John’s lingering goodwill.

Honestly, I think those are fair criticisms, but I still found myself enjoying Blue Moves a great deal.  Where John’s last double-album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road felt a bit like a well-stocked jukebox, bouncing from one style to another at a breakneck pace, Blue Moves feels deliberately slow, striking an intimate, melancholy mood and largely staying in it for 80-plus minutes.  Many of its best moments are its minor-key ballads, like the eight-minute lovers quarrel “Tonight,” the stirring gospel-soul of “Chameleon,” or the aching “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word,” the album’s first single and one of John’s most affecting songs.

There’s a weariness to John’s vocals that’s reflected in Taupin’s lyrics.  On “Tonight,” he sings to a lover of just wanting to have a night free of argument, and “Chameleon” finds him reunited with an old acquaintance with a mixture of excitement and resignation that it won’t last long.  On “Sorry…” John asks his lover straight out “what do I gotta do to make you love me?” with the exhaustion of someone who just wants to be told what to do so they can quit guessing.

Even on the more uptempo tracks like “One Horse Town,” John just sounds tired, like he’s struggling to summon the energy with which he used to deliver songs like this so easily.  In general, the more rocking tracks feel a bit perfunctory, as if John conceded that they were necessary to move units but would rather be bent over his piano singing heartsick songs.  He musters more enthusiasm for the swampy, horn-flecked Southern boogie of “Boogie Pilgrim,” with falsetto harmonies that sound like what Beck would use on his Midnite Vultures album 20-plus years later, and the campy female revenge romp “Shoulder Holster.”  Even these tracks aren’t in much of a hurry, moving with the laid-back tempo of a humid Alabama afternoon.

Though most of the album sticks close to his usual sonic template, Blue Moves also finds John with a willingness to experiment with sounds he’s never used before.  This is most evident on “The Wide-Eyed and Laughing,” built around a droning sitar line and John’s echoing recitation of Taupin’s inscrutable lyrics.  It has no percussion to speak of, and it’s unlike any other song in his canon thus far.

The final side of the album begins with “Where’s the Shoorah?” with John backed by a full-on Baptist choir as he sings some more obtuse Taupin lyrics, leading into “If There’s a God in Heaven (What’s He Waiting For?),” another gospel-leaning ballad with much more straightforward lyrics, railing against the injustices of poverty and war and a higher power that would willingly send his creations to their deaths.  He turns his gaze inward on “Idol,” where he looks through the lens of a star well out of his glory days.  Though John was still very much in his prime at this point, it’s not hard to see this song as a reference to his own sense of fatigue and slightly dwindled popularity.

After a largely downbeat string of songs, the album ends in slightly jarring fashion with “Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance!),” which feels a little like John trying to rally the troops and end the evening on a more upbeat note.  But despite his efforts, his command can’t help but feel a bit desperate after the largely downer album that precedes it.

John intended Blue Moves to be a transitional album, one that closed out his classic period and ushered in something new, and it does feel like a pretty apt capper to his whirlwind past six years.  It’s slow and long and largely darker-hued, but its length feels purposeful.  While it may have felt like a bit of a lefthand turn for the seemingly irrepressible talent seen on past albums, I can absolutely understand John wanting to try a slower pace for a while after his nonstop few years (just thinking about the relentless schedule of cranking out albums and world tours makes me want to take a nap).  If you’re willing to lose yourself in John’s contemplative mood, letting its songs unfurl at their own pace, you might find a lot to like about Blue Moves.