There is something about the album that grips you; it's a very different sound to the rocky raunchy Revenge album that came before it, or indeed the albums that came before it. It's experimental, raw, and, as Dave Stewart put it, "a sharp turn left". But that what makes it so brilliant. On first listening, it doesn't sound like much - but the songs are definitely addictive. You'll have a line or two stuck in your head for ages, something that can only be satisfied by listening, and the more you listen, the more you appreciate the album... Each time I listen to it, I love it even more.
The album is very "visual". As you listen, you can just imagine the kind of videos that could be put to it - and so could Eurythmics and Sophie Muller - that's how the Savage Video Album came about. It's only available on VHS and isn't reproduced anymore, but if you come across it, get hold of it, it's worth it. It's beautifully directed and put together.
The opening track is Beethoven (I Love To Listen To), and Lennox quirks, that "I Love To / Listen To / Beethoven". It's a great choice for an opening track, it's dramatic, enticing and yet it doesn't take itself too seriously.
I've Got A Lover (Back in Japan) is a song that could be interpreted about worldwide sexual conquests, but it's a fun song and enjoyable to listen to.
Do You Want To Break Up? is a chirpy upbeat song. The lyrics echo a sad, horrible time of being in a relationship that's bitter-sweet, but are juxtaposed against synthesized guitar riffs and solid bass drums; making the songs pure genius. The lyrics could make a very sweet ballad.
You Have Placed A Chill In My Heart gives me an Aural Orgasm. A song about being with someone you love but not being loved in return - a chill in the heart. The instrumental side of the song is lovely, fitting, dramatic, and 'visual'. The lyrics are some of the best Lennox has ever written, "I've been bought and I've been sold, Love is Rock and Love is roll, I just want someone to hold".
Shame- a song about fame, "The Beatles (and the Rolling Stones)"... This is my favourite track - and the video is brilliant. I know I'm using the word 'visual' a lot, but you get the pictures in your mind. The feeling that "yeah, I know what kind of video I could make to this".
Savage, despite it's name is very pure. Sad, and yet not a ballad or depressing in the least. Beauty in Aural form.
Another gem on the album that stand out for me is Put The Blame On Me - superbly dramatic and very James Bond. If you've heard it, you'll know exactly what I mean. You can picture it playing as James Bond drives his brand new Aston Martin across the River Thames on his way for a shag with Miss Moneypenny!
I Need A Man is a raunchy raw and fabulous anthem. The lyrics break out about the sexually-ambiguous gender-bender 80s New Romantic culture (that Lennox herself was very much a part of), a power-anthem that you'd sing in front of the mirror if you're out on the pull!
Heaven uses the very basic of lyrics, and yet goes for three and a half minutes. Beautifully composed and put together.
Wide Eyed Girl is a fun song that describes a girl whose got a sense of excitement and fame about her - "I don't care what the teacher says!" and "Mona Lisa!" sings Annie in a raunchy power anthem way; and in my head I see the Annie Lennox on the cover "walking through the streets of Rome" with everyone looking at her... again, very visual.
I Need You is an acoustic song, and is romantic in a lovely way, but it's acoustic without being boring. Annie's raunchy voice I so adored on their album Revenge shine through.
"And the words say 'hey', it's a Brand New Day' - it starts with an a Capella singing intro and really shows off Annie's vocal tablets. The lyrics are also very beautiful. It speaks about moving away from the troubled boyfriend, which has been featured throughout the album, and being able to do it without trouble - after all, it's a Brand New Day. A fitting end to the album.
The album is very much themed, the theme runs through it like a vein, which I guess is why the concept of the video album came so easily. (As I said, buy it!)
The bonus tracks on the reissue, include remixes of Beethoven, I Need A Man, and Shame. The favourite for me, being Shame - a delicious song I wish had bought them more success. It also includes a live version of I Need You.
The last bonus track is a cover of The Beatles' Come Together - the synthesizers are quirky and Lennox sings with funky passion and fun. One of the best covers of Come Together I heard. I'm sure The Beatles would be proud, and John Lennon himself with his quirky tastes (according to Wikipedia, he stated the B-52s' debut album as one of his all time favourites) would enjoy the cover version.
All in all, if you were gonna buy only one Eurythmics' album, I would say Greatest Hits, but if the rules were changed to one Eurythmics studio album, Savage would be what I recognised. Although it's not as mainstream as their others, it's pure creative genius and I have so much respect for Ms Lennox and Mr Stewart for the album.
After an unremarkable debut, Talk Talk regrouped and refashioned themselves more in the style of sophisto-era Roxy Music while developing their own voice. It's My Life shows a great leap in songwriting, the band making highly personal statements with a sexy, seductive groove and a diversity that transcends the synth pop tag. Synthesizers still play a dominant role, but the music is made far more interesting by mixing "real" instruments and challenging world music rhythms seamlessly with the technology. Still pulling off the catchy single (like "Dum Dum Girl" and the title track, as well as the simply sublime "Does Caroline Know?") on It's My Life, Talk Talk also proved themselves capable of achieving a cohesive album
Hurricane #1 were born in the same year that Ride decided to disband and go their separate ways. Signing to Creation records in 1996, they released the EP Step Into My World which reach the heady heights of 29 in the UK single chart which at the time was still a feat.To me Step Into My World is a classic Slice of Britpop
Releasing two more singles Just Another Illusion and Chain Reaction to good reviews and having gushing reviews about their live performances on their own tour and supporting the band 3 Colours Red things were looking good for the band. In late September 1997 they released their self-titled album Hurricane #1 to very good reviews including Q magazine naming it as one of the best albums of 1997. It’s been strongly referenced that the sound was not influenced by Oasis but actually inspired by them which you can hear on some tracks. This may be true but the band was far superior in their song writing (Thanks to Bell) and the pure musicianship displayed by the band and Andy Bells guitar playing. With sounds ranging from 70's wah-wah rock to double beats and songs fringing on the side of shoegazing this album had everything for a guitar music fan of the 90's.
Standout album tracks include Let go Of The Dream with its late night drunken sing-a-long chorus and rolling lead guitar sitting subtly behind the band to Mother Superior with its wah-wah opening to the slightly Oasis sounding vocal baggy beats. We find the closing track Stand In Line sounding like something Noel Gallagher would kill to have written. Close your eyes and you would think you were listening to Oasis but with Balls
Six years after earning his first blockbuster, Peter Gabriel finally delivered Us, his sequel to So. Clearly, that great span of time indicates that Gabriel was obsessive in crafting the album, and Us bears the sound of endless hours in the studio. It's not just that the production is pristine, clean, and immaculate, it's that the music is, with only a handful of exceptions (namely, the "Sledgehammer" rewrite "Steam" and the fellatio ode "Kiss That Frog"), remarkably subtle and shaded. It's also not a coincidence that Us is, as Gabriel says in his liner notes, "about relationships," since the exquisitely textured music lets him expose his soul, albeit in a typically obtuse way. Since the music is so muted, it's no surprise that the album failed to capture a mass audience the way So did, but it's foolish to expect anyone but serious fans to unravel an album this deliberate. Gabriel is as adventurous as ever, yet he is relentlessly sober about his experiments, burying exotic sounds and percussion underneath crawling tempos measured atmospherics -- this is tastefully two-toned music, assembled by a consummate craftsman who became too immersed in detail to make anything but an insular, introspective work. Some gems are easier to unearth than others -- "Digging in the Dirt" has an insistent pulse, "Blood of Eden" and "Come Talk to Me" are quite beautiful, "Secret World" is quietly anthemic -- yet, given enough time, the record's understated approach and reflection becomes its most attractive element
VH1's sadly short-lived series Storytellers was ideal for an old charmer like David Bowie, giving him an intimate platform to spin stories both old and new. When he appeared on the show on August 23, 1999, he was a few months away from releasing Hours..., an album where he comfortably came to terms with his past, so it fits that he's looking back fondly here, telling stories about the Mannish Boys and Iggy Pop, sliding the new tunes "Thursday's Child" and "Seven" in between "Life on Mars?" and "Drive-In Saturday," plus "Can't Help Thinking About Me," a single he released with the Lower Third in 1965. These are all good, relaxed, unplugged readings, but the chief attraction of VH1 Storytellers is, appropriately enough, those stories Bowie tells, as they not only offer a glimpse into the creation of these songs, they do what great stories should do: they entertain. [VH1 Storytellers is available as a CD/DVD package, with the CD containing a mere eight songs and the DVD containing a full program of 12 tunes, adding "Always Crashing in the Same Car" and Tin Machine's "I Can't Read" into the mix.]
Bowie teams up with Nile Rogers ex of Chic and creates one of the ultimate commercial albums of the entire 1980s. With ultra-contemporary and impressive production for the day, with Nile Rogers seemingly given a mission by the Bowie team to pack as many hooks into each song as he could. It's a shame that the album fails to maintain its momentum throughout, but with three massive blockbusters to open, that's hardly surprising. 'Modern Love', 'China Girl' and the title track all became worldwide bestsellers and 'Lets Dance' moved David Bowie firmly into rocks mainstream, a position that even with Ziggy, he'd never quite occupied before. Long-term fans bemoaned the lack of strangeness contained on 'Let's Dance' and wanted to keep Bowie out-there and obtuse. He won a legion of new fans. Many listeners were just pleased to have a decent entertaining album to listen to. 'Let's Dance' certainly doesn't really merit any deep analysis at any rate. It is what it is. Nile used classic arranging and production tricks when faced with a song such as 'China Girl'. Eg, you better make sure the music appropriately evokes the songs lryic and title. Similarly, with a song such as 'Let's Dance', you better make sure you can dance to it! Besides the music and contributions of musicians such as Stevie Ray Vaughan on stellar guitar, 'Let's Dance' contains some fine Bowie vocals throughout, his voice deeper than during his seventies days and really reaching fine heights during the fine and entertaining 'Cat People', for example. Still, back to those three stellar singles. 'China Girl' may well have been previously given by Bowie to Iggy Pop to record, yet this version adds all those shiny Nile Rodgers moments such as an utterly distinctive and suitably chinese sounding opening riff. 'Modern Love' has fabulous jerky and bendy sounding guitar to open before proceeding with pounding drums that continue pretty much throughout the song. Trumpets decorate the chorus, and there you are. Another hit!
All of the singles from this album sported expensive and appropriately 80s videos which were almost as memorable as the songs themselves
18 Tracks which include 1) The Prettiest Star - Ian McCulloch 2) Starman - Culture Club 3) Fall in Love With Me - Guy Chadwick 4) The Gospel According to Tony Day - Edwyn Collins 5) Life on Mars - The Divine Comedy 6) All the Young Dudes - Alejandro Escovedo 7) The Man Who Sold the World - Midge Ure 8) Boys Keep Swinging - Associates 9) Cracked Actor - Big Country 10) Funtime - Peter Murphy 11) John, I'm Only Dancing - The Polecats 12) Heroes - Blondie 13) Rebel Rebel - Sigue Sigue Sputnik 14) Fame - Duran Duran 15) Ziggy Stardust - The Gourds 16) Space Oddity - The Langley Schools Music Project 17) Panic in Detroit - Christian Death 18) Rock'n'Roll Suicide - Black Box Recorder
This album is a terrific 12-track compilation of the Australian duo's early- and mid-'80s singles. The Divinyls' Essential includes such songs as "Pleasure and Pain," "Temperamental," "Back to the Wall," and "Boys in Town," offering a good overview of their pre-"I Touch Myself" records.
New York City figured so prominently in Lou Reed's music for so long that it's surprising it took him until 1989 to make an album simply called New York, a set of 14 scenes and sketches that represents the strongest, best-realized set of songs of Reed's solo career. While Reed's 1982 comeback, The Blue Mask, sometimes found him reaching for effects, New York's accumulated details and deft caricatures hit bull's-eye after bull's-eye for 57 minutes, and do so with an easy stride and striking lyrical facility. New York also found Reed writing about the larger world rather than personal concerns for a change, and in the beautiful, decaying heart of New York City, he found plenty to talk about -- the devastating impact of AIDS in "Halloween Parade," the vicious circle of child abuse "Endless Cycle," the plight of the homeless in "Xmas in February" -- and even on the songs where he pointedly mounts a soapbox, Reed does so with an intelligence and smart-assed wit that makes him sound opinionated rather than preachy -- like a New Yorker. And when Reed does look into his own life, it's with humor and perception; "Beginning of a Great Adventure" is a hilarious meditation on the possibilities of parenthood, and "Dime Store Mystery" is a moving elegy to his former patron Andy Warhol. Reed also unveiled a new band on this set, and while guitarist Mike Rathke didn't challenge Reed the way Robert Quine did, Reed wasn't needing much prodding to play at the peak of his form, and Ron Wasserman proved Reed's superb taste in bass players had not failed him. Produced with subtle intelligence and a minimum of flash, New York is a masterpiece of literate, adult rock & roll, and the finest album of Reed's solo career.
