Hot on the heels of yesterday's post, and before I even finished writing it, I was well on my way through Barbra Streisand's 1984 album, Emotion. She's an artist who's albums I mostly ended up with because they were a dollar each. What can I say? I'm a sucker for cheap music.
As I continue my trek through actually listening to my massive collection, the journey has brought me to her albums. I made my way through 1980's Guilty yesterday, which admittedly was better than I expected. So, without further delay, let's keep going.
Emotion starts out with the title track. It was a weird listening experience for me because the music itself wasn't all that exciting, my Streisand's vocals kept me invested. This was something which continued to resonate through the following song, Make No Mistake, He's Mine (with Kim Carnes), and Time Machine (with Earth, Wind & Fire).
Additionally, unlike her prior album, Guilty, which had a very distinct Bee Gee's soft rock sound, for obvious reasons, Emotion is very synthesizer heavy. It's definitely a product of 1984, which hits a personal sweet spot for me. In fact it may have driven me to like this album more than I normally would.
The irony of this is that when Streisand steps out of what I'll call her "comfort zone", and actually decides to "rock", she does pretty good. The heavy, and heaviest track on the album, the John Mellencamp co-written, You're A Step In The Right Direction, is actually a solid tune. You can actually imagine, and hear Mellencamp singing it himself.
I also want to take a step and revisit a prior song, Left In The Dark. As I played through it, I was like, "Why is this song seven minutes long? It's too much!" The answer came when I looked into it further, and found that it was written by Jim Steinman. There's no doubt he's an excellent songwriter, but he seems to have issues with editing himself. His songs are often bloated in length.
As for the other's, I had to be cautious, and edit myself. Being impulsive to hearing "okay" music often leads to bloat of my shuffle list, and tunes I ultimately skip when they come back around. I can definitely see this happening with a lot of the songs from Emotion. As such, I'm going to limit myself to just the one noted above.
What I will say is that the album isn't bad. It's definitely more ballad heavy than I would prefer, but this was also something I expected from Babs. I don't correlate her to fast tempos or upbeat music. She's definitely a female crooner, and a contemporary artist through and through.
Barbra, herself, would go on to say in her memoir that Emotion was hodgepodge, and vowed to never record another pop album. Admittedly, this leaves me concerned for her last two releases of the 80's. Granted, I don't expect much from her 1985 follow-up, The Broadway Album, well, beyond a series of covers anyway. But it does leave me worried that her final album of the era, 1988's Till I Loved You, will be nothing short of boring. I guess we'll find out as I continue my journey.
Click "HERE" to go back to the home page. For more posts related to this one, please click the labels below.
Disclaimer: They Toy Box does not endorse or contribute to piracy. Retro Spins posts are intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. None of the music discussed here is available for sale, downloading or distribution. |
| THIS WEEK ON THE CHARTS September 21, 1985 |
No comments:
Post a Comment