If you removed the Clavinet the whole album would fall apart as a cohesive piece of work.
Obviously The Weight is a banger. How can he sing so well on this and so badly on In The Station?
Why does every other song sound like Randy Newman?
Too much wailing psudeo hymns.
Chest Fever - rock organ works. This tune is a banger that gets bad and then gets good again.
Lonesome Suzie is a fucking tune too. The first one that actually feels as emotional as it vocally advertises itself.
It occupies a strange space when viewed in 2023, because so much of it is either phenomenally influenced and/or influential. I keep hearing clichés and recognisable riffs that either inspired, or were inspired by, The Band
The Bee Gees owe money for I Shall Be Released. Tune.
How does someone sound so energetic and lazy at the same time?
God what a fucking great album. It like a really nice panic attack.
Someone Great sounds like someone running their fingers across nylon. I was listening to it in bed and thought the dog was scratching something.
Is there anything worse than scatting? Worst intro to an objectively good song and album ever?
Immediately hit with 2003 language that would get you canceled Immediately twenty years later, was it always this bad? Even if it was always bad, I feel like Amy was particularly bad for it...
I don't know how anyone listens to this album without hating every music industry cunt who profited from her whilst watching, and even encouraging, her spiral.
Even the songs that don't hit with me are objectively good. I'd never put No Greater Love on; it's cringy, saccharine, and trying too hard to sound exactly like (complete with vomit inducing fake vinyl surface sound) the oldies it's stolen from, and it's still clearly brimming with talent.
Don't get me wrong, the wole album is relentlessly strong but when Sir Duke hits it's like getting bodied by a train.
Curse Will Smith for planting his lyrics in my head when I hear I Wish.
It's a shame Saturn isn't the last song, it's so good and tonally would finish it perfectly. Also All Day Sucker adds nothing to the album.... sorry Stevie.
Stevie Wonder is so good. No more notes.
It don't get whiter than this.
That'll Be The Day, the 7th track on the album, is the first time that the guitar has any feeling behind it.
There are good things about it, Rock me my Baby is a fun little bop, Buddy has a a great voice and it still sounds unique, but it's not nearly enough.
Imagine being John Lee Hooker or Chuck Berry, performing with magnitudes more emotion, and seeing this milquetoast doo wop outpace you. I get that Rock and Roll was in its infancy, and that this was the pale, socially acceptable, thin end of the wedge needed to penetrate the uptight sphincter of 1950's white America, but that doesn't make it a good album.
Spotify randomly played The Chiffons and The Clovers immediately after this album and they were both far more intense, more emotional, more interesting, and just better listens. But they're not remembered with the fondness that this album is. They're just black.
Look. This album is sick as fuck. Proto Punk and Ska and Pop Punk by way of Donovan and The Doors. I wish I'd got to see this live and on a variety of drugs.
It's just good isn't it.
Haters will say it sounds muddy. They're right, but they're also just haters.
Perfect pop counter-culture but how was it so easy for them to record such an album and make it so digestible for 1990s mums and dads?
