Mama Can't Buy You Love: The Official ILM Track-By-Track ELTON JOHN 1978-1988 Listening Thread

it's like the Max Fischer Players trying to do an episode of Kieslowski's Dekalog. anyhow, it's a nice distraction from a song as lyrically gruesome as it's dreadfully arranged (love the doorbell chimes upon the title line's appearance)

And the video is the most literal realization of a song since "Tight Connection to My Heart."

i'd only wished they'd shown the sniper sleeping at night in the burned-out subway

finally gets going melodically, in a jacques brel kind of way, around the 3:15 mark ("no birthday songs/to sing again").

in the meantime i'm wondering if that beret he found on the street today was the kind you find in a secondhand store.

"Soul Glove"

http://youtu.be/4A9fF-R_UtE

http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/gallery/100601/GAL-10Jun01-4743/media/PHO-10Jun01-228646.jpg

you can see Bernie T. trying to do some kind of play on "hand in glove" & then the metaphor just balloons out of control

see I looked at the title and started singing "Soul Love."

"To shave in someone else's mirror
Is one desire I haven't dreamed of yet"

Hysterically arranged but not terrible.

late Cold War nostalgia moment

"Nikita"

http://youtu.be/CKmXRwjWYUM

http://hitriders.be/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Foto-Nikita.jpg

I like this -- another solid vocal performance. Lovely bass.

yes! the first elton hit i can remember really reacting to as a normal hit as opposed to some song by some guy my parents think is a big deal. similar to but not nearly as heavy handed as sting's 'russians', similar to alot of the pop culture of the time doing this tip-toe into rehumanizing the russians, whether this was due to gorbachev or just the tide breaking against the ott anti-russkie sentiment of reagan's first term i don't know. what's interesting to me is the extent to which the trend starts w/ english artists and that sense of doomed fatalism there - nikita (a masculine name despite the video) will 'never' know anything about elton's home or hugs, sting dreaming for at best nuclear annihilation being held off for a few more years, you don't really get any optimism until american artists start exhibiting the thaw w/ stallone's 'if i can change and you can change, everybody can change' that same winter. six years later the soviet union was gone.

yeah, this is v. much part of that fatalistic 1984-85 period, just before Gorbachev, whose common theme was "at some point we're going to nuke each other, and it's a shame as we're all the same deep down." As you said, Sting's "Russians" being a far more pompous version of this than E's "Nikita." There was also the Western idea of the USSR being an old prison whose citizens just want to run away and go shopping and bowling and watch cable TV (see Elton's video); that the USSR was trapped in history and no longer made sense to its citizens, even its rulers.

The song's better than I recall---there's a feel of the Cars' "Drive" in its verses, i think, and the fretless bass/rhythm guitar helps shuffle it along nicely. EJ predicts "the Final Countdown" in the synth solo (as he had with that B-side whose title I forget).

Western idea of the USSR being an old prison whose citizens just want to run away and go shopping and bowling and watch cable TV - haha yes, 'they love blue jeans! but cannot get them because communism!', ninotchka filtered thru kmart was a definite theme of the time.

bizarrely, the actress who played Nikita in the vid. cut an answer song of sorts a year later:

http://youtu.be/uLxpHFHGDdg

two years later billy joel in moscow, the year after that paul mccartney's choba b cccp, as pop enacted its own form of perestroika.

Can't underestimate the relief expended by libs -- hell, everyone -- when Gorby came along.

-there's a feel of the Cars' "Drive" in its verses

Yes! It's the synth and rhythm.

Also, in 1984, his reelection secured, Reagan revised a campaign script, much to the consternation of his furious aides, to add the following:

The common interests have to do with the things of everyday life for people everywhere. Just suppose with me for a moment that an Ivan and an Anya could find themselves, oh, say, in a waiting room, or sharing a shelter from the rain or a storm with a Jim and Sally, and there was no language barrier to keep them from getting acquainted. Would they then debate the differences between their respective governments? Or would they find themselves comparing notes about their children and what each other did for a living?

Before they parted company, they would probably have touched on ambitions and hobbies and what they wanted for their children and problems of making ends meet. And as they went their separate ways, maybe Anya would be saying to Ivan, ``Wasn't she nice? She also teaches music.'' Or Jim would be telling Sally what Ivan did or didn't like about his boss. They might even have decided they were all going to get together for dinner some evening soon. Above all, they would have proven that people don't make wars.

People want to raise their children in a world without fear and without war. They want to have some of the good things over and above bare subsistence that make life worth living. They want to work at some craft, trade, or profession that gives them satisfaction and a sense of worth. Their common interests cross all borders.

"Too Young"

http://youtu.be/m7dQbYxmb-M

http://www.waynesleep.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Freddie_Elton.jpg

with Roger Taylor and John Deacon!

sorta scandalous May/December romance from Elton, but one so plodding & creaky you wonder if it's about an 80 yr old courting a 60-yr old. Roger Taylor does what he can: military snare tattoos, what sounds like tympani at one point. But enduring all 5+ minutes of this is like being stuck at a train crossing

I don't know what they do, honestly. And EJ's intensity does not relent.

you ready for this?

"Wrap Her Up"

http://youtu.be/_RaMkpJGOz8

http://burningthegrounddjpault.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/a-front7.jpg

where do I begin?

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

"Writers: Elton John, Bernie Taupin, Charlie Morgan, Paul Westwood, Davey Johnstone, Fred Mandel"

6 co-composers for this?

Everyone in the room!

blow for everyone!

Man this song sucks. Sad that with 6 writers not one of them was able to see that. Maybe it's a diffusion of responsibility thing.

Two men flapping their wings and clucking trying to convince themselves, the six writers, engineer, producer, wives, girlfriends that they're straight. What a spectacle.

whosever idea it was to have George Michael wail the same falsetto melody over and over again should be set upon by wolves

i'm convinced the video is someone's attempt to undermine the "hey, no we love ladies" thing: the Zelig-like Elton lusting over Nancy Reagan, Joan Collins, QE II etc.

Just saw the video for the first time - way more restraint than I was expecting.

only gay men lusted after Nancy Reagan tbh

robin thicke should steal this groove for "blurred lines 2."

"Satellite"

http://youtu.be/UByU1GDRzZ4

http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1895/PreviewComp/SuperStock_1895-43246.jpg

AsianPopRock
4 months ago

This was one of those songs I cranked to the hilt, and often sung to the top of my lungs, unconcerned with how I sounded to anyone anywhere around me! OH, YEAH! I just let it rip! Now, I understand this man is "the butt of many jokes" because of his unappealing nature, and marriage to another man, and "Liberace-Like reputation of our day," but let me tell all a little something who are too young, or too uninformed to understand. . . "THIS VERY MAN WAS ONE BAD, BAD, BOY IN HIS DAY!"

OH, YEAH! I mean, Elton John was a notorious womanizing rake back in the day

this song isn't bad, really. Good vocal. According to the experts in that YT comment thread, it was remixed notably for the CD?

The arrangement tries for eighties synth funk.

can you find a decent copy of "Tell Me What the Papers Say"?

no, couldn't find it either. Spotify/grooveshark time, I guess.

decent uptempo Elton (fat synth lines, cowbell, hints at Jerry Lee Lewis-esque piano) with a relentless bassline cranked up in the mix. Lyric is Taupin's version of the Stones' "Hang Fire": guy reads the papers and gripes "Coal mines closed down...Japanese still killing whales...Lipstick boys all look like queens"

"Candy By the Pound"

http://youtu.be/3vOq9fpTnOw

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MHYPEePejb0/Sk3dH0W4_yI/AAAAAAAAAV0/eP-4HiIzvaU/s400/elton+john.jpg

this is a soul death in a song

holy hell

col, I disagree! This is the first number in ages in which the producer knows where (and whether) to use horns. The verse melody insinuated itself into my brain. What comes off gross is the synthesizer.

what happened? A 180 degree spin in 9 hrs?

btw, scored a nice-sounding Too Low For Zero LP for two bucks today (if ever in Northampton, MA, go to Turn It Up, folks). Didn't have the heart to buy Leather Jackets, which was slotted next to it.

Ice on Fire goes out with a weepie

"Shoot Down the Moon"

http://youtu.be/2_HMPXrDCr4

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/A2IlCn4A-CE/hqdefault.jpg

Not terrible just perfunctory. Taupin went through his pockets looking for scraps of cliches he could cobble together.