6.8.15 Adam News and Info
Jun 8, 2015 17:46:58 GMT -5
Post by Q3 on Jun 8, 2015 17:46:58 GMT -5
www.allmusic.com/album/the-original-high-mw0002843910
Adam Lambert shakes off the shackles of the past by returning to his roots on The Original High. No longer with RCA, the label who signed him in the wake of American Idol, Lambert seizes this freedom by reuniting with producers Max Martin and Shellback, the team who gave him his big 2009 hit "Whataya Want from Me," but this is by no means a throwback. Martin and Shellback remain fixtures at the top of the pop charts -- they were instrumental collaborators on Taylor Swift's 1989, the biggest album of 2014 -- and they're a comfortable, stylish fit for the clever Lambert, a singer as comfortable with a glam-disco past as he is an EDM present. The Original High cannily synthesizes these two sides of Lambert, an intersection made explicit on "Lucy," where Adam sings about "diamond dogs" while his Queen bandmate Brian May lays down lead guitar over a crawling electro-beat. Elsewhere, Lambert ratchets up either the rock or the dance, but usually favors the latter, sometimes sliding into full-bore glitter ball territory -- "The Original High," where the beat slowly modulates from disco into EDM and the bonus "These Boys," which shamelessly appropriates the polyester styles of the '70s -- but usually finding an expert balance between pulsating rhythms and gleaming surfaces, not to mention insidiously ingratiating pop hooks. This emphasis on the hook and tune distinguishes The Original High, a record where Martin and Shellback's production, like Adam's soaring vocals, is in service of the song. Although the album can linger on moody noir a little too long -- the lightest material is squired away on the three bonus tracks, each an effervescent delight -- the individual components work on their own merits, whether it's the steely clatter of the Tove Lo duet "Rumours," the elegantly skeletal cinemascapes of "Ghost Town," or the cleanly constructed lines of "Things I Didn't Say." Here, and throughout The Original High, Adam Lambert demonstrates he's in perfect control of his style and sound and knows how to combine both into a sterling modern pop record.
JMHO -- I read Rolling Stone but I rarely agree with their critics on music. The tend to favor rock and alt music. They have no critical standards, and their individual critics have quite different takes on music.
My fav wrong RS Review....
Wheels of Fire
Cream
Wheels of Fire (1968)
Rating: Unfavorable
"Cream is good at a number of things; unfortunately song-writing and recording are not among them...The set begins with a Jack Bruce original, "White Room," which is practically an exact duplication of "Tales of Brave Ulysses" from their Disraeli Gears album, including the exact same lines for guitar, bass and drums. The lyrics are not much to speak of and it's very difficult to imagine why they would want to do this again, unless of course, they had forgotten that they had done it before. The Sonny Bono-ish production job adds little." (Jann Wenner, 7/20/68 Review)
Another famous miss...
The Beatles
Hey Jude / Revolution (1968) [Single]
Rating: Mixed (?)
""Hey Jude" is the text of a sermon on truelove, delivered to the world at large and more particularly to John Lennon on the occasion of his finally 'making it better.' You see, beatlefans, John has had a kind of un-together scene with women, if one can judge by the songs he's sung about them (& I believe one can)...So what happened next was that John remembered to fall in love with a beautiful Pornographic Priestess and they are at present living happily ever after...And now back to this song which is full of good advice (probably already taken) to break the old pattern...For the pedants among us, I offer this additional fodder for intellection: in the Christian legends there are, besides the two Johns, two Judes. One is supposed to have been a brother of Jesus and the other is the well known Iscariot, betrayor of Our Lord. An Eggman and a Walrus. Libra Lennon, the Duality Magnate, has just been righteously gotten together by the absolute interchangeability of the symbols for Good and Evil. Their name is one, and 'don't you know that it's just you?' Incidentally, the 'praised' (saint) Jude is the Patron of that which is called Impossible, and there is your souvenir copy!" (Catherine Manfredi, 10/12/68 Review)
No maybe this is my favorite bad RS review.....
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin (1972)
Review: Unfavorable
"The popular formula in England in this, the aftermath era of such successful British bluesmen as Cream and John Mayall, seems to be: add, to an excellent guitarist who, since leaving the Yardbirds and/or Mayall, has become a minor musical deity, a competent rhythm section and pretty soul-belter who can do a good spade imitation. The latest of the British blues groups so conceived offers little that its twin, the Jeff Beck Group, didn't say as well or better three months ago, and the excesses of the Beck group's Truth album (most notably its self-indulgence and restrictedness), are fully in evidence on Led Zeppelin's debut album...
..."Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" alternates between prissy Robert Plant's howled vocals fronting an acoustic guitar and driving choruses of the band running down a four-chord progression while John Bonham smashes his cymbals on every beat. The song is very dull in places (especially on the vocal passages), very redundant, and certainly not worth the six-and-a-half minutes the Zeppelin gives it...
...Like the Beck group they are also perfectly willing to make themselves a two- (or, more accurately, one-a-half (sic)) man show. It would seem that, if they're to help fill the void created by the demise of Cream, they will have to find a producer (and editor) and some material worthy of their collective attention." (John Mendelsohn, 3/15/69 Review)
>> Seriously John Bonham is considered the best rock drummer ever!
****
No it must be this miss:
Elvis Presley
Suspicious Minds / You'll Think of Me (1969) [Single]
Rating: Unfavorable
"Elvis' single, on the other hand, is disappointing, because all the pieces seem to be there but it simply doesn't jell. It's not exciting...Elvis is not allowed to project. He's buried in some odd mix of strings, horns, and a female chorus...The vocal, usually double-tracked, is given more echo and more distortion than on any Elvis record I can recall, and this only adds to the generally muddy sound which in the end destroys the disc." (Greil Marcus, 10/18/69 Review)
****
Or this....
The Beatles
Abbey Road (1969)
Rating: Unfavorable
"What's it like? Well, I don't much like it, but then I have a thing about the Beatles. Since Revolver I've been buying their albums, playing them a couple of times, and then forgetting about them. The last album was, admittedly, exciting in places, but I still don't play it much because there's still too much stuff on it that should have been edited...Of course, the Beatles are still the Beatles, but it does tread a rather tenuous line between boredom, Beatledom, and bubblegum...
and this....
John Lennon
Imagine (1971)
Rating: Mixed
"In its technical sloppiness and self-absorption, Imagine is John's Self-Portrait...on the heels of POB it only seems to reinforce the questioning of what John's relationship to rock really is. "Imagine," for instance, is simply the consolidation of primal awareness into a world movement. It asks that we imagine a world without religions or nations, and that such a world would mean brotherhood and peace. The singing is methodical but not really skilled, the melody undistinguished, except the bridge, which sounds nice to me." (Ben Gerson, 10/28/71 Review)
****
Or my favorite album from 1970....(or maybe Neil Young's "After the Goldrush" from 1970 which they also rated "Unfavorable".
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Déjà vu (1970)
Rating: Unfavorable
"The heralded leather cover turns out to be nothing more than crimpled cardboard. What a milestone - fake leatherette!" (Langdon Winner, 4/30/70 Review)
****
Or perhaps this one....
Queen
A Night at the Opera (1975)
Rating: 2 Stars
"The group's flamboyance couldn't compensate for the weakness of its songwriting." (Dave Marsh, 1983 RS Record Guide)
RS panned ANATO when it was released, and they did not even get it 8 years later!!
****
They have not gotten better over time. No one takes RS reviews seriously unless they get a really good review. They are usually wrong!! (Their best albums of 2014 list includes 3-star reviewed albums in the Top 10, and 4 star reviewed albums at the bottom.)
