Last in my head on February 10, 2012. First blogged June 20, 2009.
Artist: Journey
Year: 1981
Rating: Warm
Showing posts with label Journey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Journey. Show all posts
Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)
Fitting song on the morning Amber goes home for Xmas with her family, and I stay here. Goddamn, my unconscious mind is hokey.
Artist: Journey
Year: 1983
Rating: Luke Hot
Note: Most unnecessary parenthetical in a song title ever.
Who's Crying Now?
This is the case of a great rock ballad with lush Steve Perry vocals, memorable Jonathan Cain keyboard lines, and one of the most stellar guitar solos in the '80s rock canon by Neal Schon. And while the emotion conveyed by the music and vocals is palpable, the lyrics are just ridiculous:
So many stormy nights, so many wrongs or rights
Neither could change their headstrong ways
And in a lover's rage, they tore another page
The fightin' is worth the love they save
Can there be a bigger cliché about bad relationships than stormy weather? And where is the missing metaphor from which the "page" is torn? You shouldn't tear pages when it's storming out, anyway, they'll get all soggy. As in so many pop songs, the words seem to have emerged from the diary scrawl of an eighth grader. Nevertheless, the lyrics are the only complaint I have about this classic '80s brood.
Artist: Journey
Year: 1981
Rating: Warmly warm
Foolish Heart
Lord, who designed the cinematography for this snore-fest of a video? I have a soft spot for the lead single from this album, Oh Sherrie, but only because it's exuberantly cheesy. Foolish Heart totally blows.Artist: Steve Perry
Year: 1984
Rating: Cold
Magic by the Cars
I adore the Cars. Though, as it often is with songs in my head, this one isn't the end-all-be-all of awesome songs by an artist I adore. If I had a more refined shuffle feature in my unconscious mind, I would probably mainly be playing songs from their first, fucking brilliant self-titled 1978 album, which evidently has now gone platinum six times over. 1984's Heartbeat City was a decent record, though I will say that Benjamin Orr (may he rest in peace) was best as a bassist and not as the front man. It's not at all that he was a bad singer (Just What I Needed, from the first record, is excellent), it's that Drive veers dangerously close to schmaltzy blue-eyed soul territory. But never mind, "Magic" is a cute enough number, and this album wasn't anything close to the abysmal shark jump that band members Greg Hawkes and Elliot Easton made in forming the New Cars in 2005 with Todd Motherfucking Rundgren replacing Ric Ocasek on lead vocals.
Do not even get me started on how wrong it is to reform the Cars without Ocasek, Orr, and drummer David Robinson. I have a serious axe to grind with any band who reforms decades after their heyday for the payola, particularly when crucial band members don't participate (see Journey sans Steve Perry). For that matter, I'm similarly irked by bands that stay together well passed their relevance for the payola (the quintessential example being the Rolling Stones, who haven't produced a song worth a dime since the late '70s but grossed close to $500 million on their last world tour). Wow, now who's veering dangerously away from the point?
Artist: The Cars
Year: 1984
Rating: Warm
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