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

palate cleanser: http://youtu.be/2hcXdtqojFg

"I Fall Apart"

http://youtu.be/soWK6-6sx1s

http://assets-s3.rollingstone.com/assets/images/gallery/500x595/9cac0aa5b424aadaa7d14521571a784b40b6bc1a.jpg

ye gods. best match of title and photo we've had yet

to me the album's best ballad. I'm going on memory: I'll have more to say in a little while.

He does tug a bit hard on those verses, like he's trying to pull off a George Michael impersonation (that' s his idea of eighties soul).

yeah, he's trying to regain a bit of dignity here, and trying a bit too hard---all the thundering on his piano bass keys in the bridge. Some interesting production touches for once--is that reversed guitar towards the end?

Leather Jackets is not good at all, but it's not substantially worse than the previous two. Those just benefited by having at least one good single to orbit the lesser tracks around. So when you've got the Cliff Richard duet and "Heartache All Over the World" as your centerpieces, you've got trouble.

OK, so let's recap.

A Single Man: OK, not worse than, say, Caribou. "Part-Time Love" has taken permanent residence in my brain.

Victim of Love: As gross as its reputation suggests, although a couple of track suggest he could've pulled a Philly/disco crossover if he'd had the songs.

21 at 33: Faceless.

The Fox: Worse.

Jump Up!: The discovery. Were it not for the last third, it'd be his best since 1975.

Too Low For Zero: Same.

Breaking Hearts: He's losing focus.

Ice on Fire: More offensive than Leather Jackets.

Leather Jackets: Breaking Hearts without "Sad Songs..."

I'm pretty much the same. Victim of Love is by far the most flat-out awful album of the set for me. I don't even remember 21 from 33 anymore, so faceless, yes. I have a slight preference for Fox over 21 as the former is Elton trying to do something new on it---some sort of art-schlock European-oriented conceptual thing. It's an interesting failure, at least.

Curious whether the next album is indeed the proper "comeback" or no.

B-side blast:

"Highlander" B-side of "Heartache All Over the World"

http://youtu.be/s0TtLTe1RAE

"Billy and the Kids" "Slow Rivers" B-side

http://youtu.be/UE5FjZeT9E4

and "Lord of the Flies", another "Slow Rivers" b

http://youtu.be/21Qw1zy8-_Q

http://davidmcgough.com/photos/Elton%20John,%20wife,%20Renata%201986%20NY.jpg

the "Highlander" theme is EPCOT music.

"Lord of the Flies" is the best thing he recorded in '86, IMO. Why did he bury this?

"Town of Plenty"

http://youtu.be/2alDsRygZC4

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v291/MadScntst/appearances/1980s/19880708aids/324.jpg

We're in Reg Strikes Back territory, another comeback.

He's lost the ability to rock persuasively, and the arrangement is hamhanded (the synth stabs are gross; his voice is swathed in echo). Not terrible but I wouldn't play it again. And dig the "Kids Incorporated" video.

looks like i'm gonna have to hear Jump Up then.

thank God we're out of the mullet years at last. Starting to see the "grand dame" Elton look of the '90s emerge.

this one's overbearing: EJ pushes the verse as loudly as he does the chorus and he hectors you half the time, while the production buries the (admittedly irritating) keyboard hooks. Bernie does his part by rhyming "media" with "media"

"A Word in Spanish"

http://youtu.be/QUBDJ3Kyv0c

http://img.youtube.com/vi/QUBDJ3Kyv0c/0.jpg

The second single but I don't remember it.

video reminds me of "Domino Dancing" -- young man as object of lust in tropical climate.

As for the song, it would be prettier if he didn't sing it like a carnival barker.

yeah, what's with the oversinging on this album so far? It's like after the vocal chord operation he's hell-bent on exploiting his restored pipes. Plus maybe some delight from being out of his marriage & David Geffen's grasp (a bio has EJ calling his Geffen era "six years of pure hell")

"Spanish" goes on a minute longer than it needs to, and Johnstone's "Spanish" acoustic guitar solo is as inevitable as it's dull, but there does seem to be a touch more life in these songs than in the past trio of albums.

"Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters, Part 2"

http://youtu.be/k8gAY-NM6Hg

http://www.biography.com/imported/images/Biography/Images/Galleries/Elton%20John/elton-22-sized.jpg

I couldn't find it separate from the classic original.

yeesh, hearing those back to back does the sequel little favors. Again with the bellowing, again w/the hateful synth stabs, and there's barely a melody in the chorus. Because there's just not enough going on in overworked thing, we get a few quotes ("CIT-AY!" like Stevie Wonder; a "Drive My Car" beep-beep-yeah) too. At a loss, EJ turns things over to Freddie Hubbard, who gasses on for about a minute.

"boy, i hope he plays 'Mad Hatters Part 2 tonight!" said no one at an Elton John concert ever

it made me realize what a thing of beauty the original is.

what's with the "Wrap Her Up" production?

the original is my favorite elton john song. those two-part harmonies with himself melt me. "part 2" is no "your gold teeth 2," let's just say that.

Elton in the wild: "Nikita" softly playing over the PA in the supermarket this morning

"I Don't Wanna Go on With You Like That"

http://youtu.be/Wyi9AbfUa1E

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/Wyi9AbfUa1E/hqdefault.jpg

A #2 in America, his biggest hit under his own name since "Don't Go Breaking My Heart." I can't deny how generic it sounds on, but after years of Taupin's excesses the simplicity of the lyric reads like poetry. Elton's first great vocal in years too ("one more set OF BOOTS on your welcome MAT"). As a kid the finger snap percussion fascinated me; it didn't sound like anything else at the time. Finally, an excellent (and again simple) keyboard solo from EJ himself. Everyone sounds like he's having fun.

My parents used to always have the AC stations on in the car growing up, and they played a lot of 80's and 90's Elton John (and not much of his 70's). "I Don't Wanna Go On" was one of my favorite tracks of his at the time, and it still holds up pretty well. I like the chord change in the chorus on "I just wanna tell you honey" that lightens up the song for just a second. For some reason, the simple structure works much better for me here than in say, "Sad Songs". And yeah, the ending solo is great.

The song has vanished though. I don't hear it at all, and even at the time it was a bigger video hit 'round my part of the world.

Protegé George Michael and his "Monkey" kept it from #1 btw.

My frustrations so far w/Reg Strikes Back was that I'd hoped it be a lot more like the single, instead of following the mid-'80s Elton formula of hit + sorta-okays + dreck.

But "I Don't Wanna Go On" holds up---EJ sounds pissed, even saucy ("got plans to make me one'a FOUR or FIVE") his agitation matched by the ceaseless thwacks on the off-beats and how he keeps shuffling back the refrain so that there's never a break in the fight (so the bridge, when it finally appears, is a relief, as is the coda solo). It sounds far more contemporary than the rest of EJ's generation were in '88, though agree it's sort of vanished in the past decade.

is this it for "rock" Elton? The rest of his big singles to come are all ballads, unless i'm forgetting something

TS: "I Don't Wanna Go On..." vs "Roll With It"

EJ in a walk. "Roll With It" has far too many "this is real soul music" signifiers, very Baby Boom Reconquista. Elton's single sounds like hip-hop by comparison

I like this. A reasonable sequel to "I'm Still Standing", almost

"Roll With It" is unabashedly, Traffic-copping retro, "Go On With You" isn't

In honor of Frankie Knuckles, let me note that those high synth block chords floating over the piano line are gorgeous.

Yeah I guess I haven't heard it in a while on the radio, but there aren't too many songs from this latter-day period that I hear outside the house anymore. Pretty much just the Lion King songs, maybe "Sacrifice" once in a blue moon.

"Japanese Hands"

http://youtu.be/44TzJSmsAt4

http://davidmcgough.com/photos/thumbs/Sting,%20Elton%20John%201988%20NY.jpg

well, small mercies: Elton managed to avoid using any offensive musical cliches, like the "Oriental" guitar riff ("China Girl," "Turning Japanese" etc). But then he has to sing Taupin lines like "sitting cool behind your painted fan" and "beneath those oriental combs," so it's all for naught

still singing about chicks too – that's most offensive

also: are they like healing hands?

like a massage therapist's, maybe

"Goodbye Marlon Brando"

http://www.paroles-musique.com/eng/Elton_John-Goodbye_Marlon_Brando-lyrics,p86445

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Music/Pix/pictures/2009/11/26/1259238162313/Marlon-Brando-in-Don-Juan-001.jpg

apparently he performed this one a bit.

a rocker! "say goodbye to GLASNOST!...goodbye to DY-UT SOODA!" it's the pissed, put-upon figure of "Don't Wanna Go On With You Like That," now flipping off the entire world. So the track's suitably cheap and ugly: that synth beat sounds like it was lifted off the back of a truck. Basically Elton's take on T. Petty's "Jammin' Me."

The first interesting discovery since the first side of TLFZ. The guitar is closer to hair metal and it suits him; for once the carnival barker tone suits him. His attempt to write "God"? He did sell his costumes at Sotheby's that year.

"The Camera Never Lies"

http://youtu.be/-lDmol4Lfbc

http://a395.idata.over-blog.com/1/41/08/76/BERNIE-8/Elton-John-1988.jpg

say goodbye to diet soda?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOkzRZWMLKA

what about the one with Paula Abdul?

80s-Elton-by-numbers, sung well & given a kick midway through w/ some fun piano runs, as if EJ had gotten bored while listening to a track playthrough

"Heavy Traffic"

http://youtu.be/LnsqaNRTQTc

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/UYViqG0MWng/0.jpg