1001 Albums Summary

I owned this already and have listened to it many times - I'm less of a fan than my wife. I went to college with the guy Shadowboxer was about. That taught me an important lesson - he was a really ordinary guy, likable and attractive, but not, like, otherworldly. So artists are humans with relationships like mine, huh! Everything isn't always dialed up to 11 unless they do that in their art! On relistening, i noticed a few things: -There's a lot of Elton John in her piano. That's great! I love Sir Elton! -There's a lot of hip hop derivative drum work and that's an odd choice. Feels appropriative, and that's not usually a critique I appreciate, because music is like herpes, once you hear music from other cultures, it's difficult/impossible to pretend you didn't. But this feels more like "We set Elton John to some beats we got from the Meters." Very 90s move, one not discussed as often as I'd hope. Natalie Imbruglia did it in Torn, Fiona did it, Alanis did it, Liz Phair didn't that I remember. -In the video for Criminal, Apple was treated like some voyeur's idea of a teen sex victim. That's fucked up. But this whole album has a seductive teen vibe (The Child Is Gone) and I'm wondering how much was engineered into the music as opposed to just the video. -I don't think this album has aged all that well. Was she exercising agency? Was she a teen sex victim? Were the Calvin Klein video visuals a commentary on that or drafting on it? I don't want to have to wade into detailed oral histories to enjoy a record tbh. There's a lot of weird fetishism here, like this sexy Jewish girl doing flirty hip hop inflected jazz, and maybe she breaks free of it on "When the pawn..." but maybe not. In terms of the songs, I think the singles were pretty well selected here, although Slow Like Honey and Never Is a Promise are kind of weak. I like Criminal and Shadowboxer, even though they both make me feel like I should take a shower. I love Fiona's piano playing but don't love that someone found an apparently pretty naive teen and had her do kiddy porn for her music videos.