Cat Stevens: Classic Or Dud?

love this guy so much. Teaser + the Firecat is all time classic.

It varies. Early pop stuff: so-so
Teaser thru Buddah & the Chocolate Box: classic
Foreigner: OK-ish
The stuff after that: Dud
Izitso is among the most heinous Dudclumps I can think of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-WuDK8nU7g

wow that's a pretty shitty MoTown ripoff

ha - that's pretty inarguable, but it has a certain craptacular charm I think. the Cat version on Matthew and Son is a bit more polished. "When I Speak To The Flowers" is the real gem off that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TWd3skb-Rw&a=i28oI7Dj_Sk&playnext_from=ML

really feeling the keyboard player here

Surprised at the amount of duds here. I just assumed everyone was okay with Cat Stevens. I second the 'he seems to exist independent of any particular scene'. Is that the block? That parents generally like Cat Stevens and he doesn't really have a narrative? But hating the songs? Not sure I get that.

He gets a classic from me, because while I might not actively listen to the guy, I can recall at least half a dozen of his melodies. And if I were drunk, and someone put on a Cat Stevens record, I'd happily sing along.

i'd say neither c nor d. i'm "okay with him", but am real fine w/out

classic. he makes me sad and nostalgic in a way that I don't think any other singer consistently does.

just turn up the cat stevens and long for the days before bill gates put so many good polio policemen out of work

The first cut is the deepest is a great song, could've been a motown single.

A letter from him was published in the Toronto Star the other day. Didn't read the piece that prompted it.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editors/2014/12/01/cats_message_is_still_peace.html

'Matthew & Son' is one of the most unheralded influences on British new wave, I think. The piano lick/chorus (lyrics aside) is something that Gary Numan could have come up with in the late '70s/early '80s. The middle-eight recalls the pre-chorus in Tears For Fears' 'Mad World'!

BABY I KNOW

“Sitting” is such an odd song, it almost reaches the intensity of those John Cale songs where he loses his shit a couple minutes in. And yet he ends a bunch of lines with this vague, half-hearted “or so”/“or something.” Weird songwriting choice!