“Stay”
I’ve been sitting here staring at the clock on the wall
And I’ve been laying here praying, praying she won’t call
It’s just another call from home
And you’ll get it and be gone
And I’ll be crying
And I’ll be begging you, baby
Beg you not to leave
But I’ll be left here waiting
With my Heart on my sleeve
Oh, for the next time we’ll be here Read the rest of this entry »
Although she wasn’t anointed Indie Spice by the British music press until after the Spice Girls’ second album, Melanie Chisholm always made it clear that she preferred Blur to Take That. Of course, her personal musical tastes never surfaced on the Spices’ albums, which may be the reason she is the first Spice to release a solo album while still in the group. With her debut, Northern Star, Mel C wants to break from her Sporty Spice persona while proving herself as a legitimate musician and she does, more or less, with a surprisingly diverse record. Melanie C has a fairly strong voice, a good sense of melody, and carries Read the rest of this entry »
If Everything Must Go found Manic Street Preachers coping with Richey James’ sudden, unexplained disappearance, its follow-up, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, finds them putting the tragedy behind them and flourishing as a trio. Wisely, the group builds on the grand sound of Everything Must Go, creating a strangely effective fusion of string-drenched, sweeping arena rock and impassioned, brutally honest punk. Since the band never writes about anything less than major issues, whether it be political or personal, it’s appropriate that their music sounds as majestic and overpowering as their pretensions. Given that the first single was titled “If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next,” calling the Manics Read the rest of this entry »
This album’s “hybrid” is that of hard rock, hip-hop vocals/rhythms and electronic and industrial beats. Some bands couldn’t make it work–they couldn’t blend all of these elements. And some bands’ song writing strucure (soft verse, hard chorus) would stick out like a sore thumb. But Linkin Park do it correctly. The verses (often with hip-hop vocals) flow so smoothly into the hard rock parts. The key ingredient here is a great DJ, who does more than the random scratch. He is what makes it so fluid, so you can barely tell when the verse ends and the chorus begins. Read the rest of this entry »
Perhaps if the cut-’n'-paste remix record Reanimation hadn’t appeared as a stopgap measure in the summer of 2002, Linkin Park’s second record, Meteora, would merely have been seen as a continuation of their 2000 debut, Hybrid Theory, instead of a retreat to familiar ground. Then again, Reanimation wasn’t much more than a way to buy time (along with maybe a little credibility), so it’s unfair to say that its dabbling in electronica and hip-hop truly pointed toward a new direction for the group, but it did provide a more interesting listening experience than Meteora, which is nothing more Read the rest of this entry »
I loved every second of Hybrid Theory and Meteora. I loved the heavy guitar riffs, the mix of rap + rock. This album lacks the heavyness that characterized its predecessors. Most of the tracks are soft. Gone is the Points of Authority style headbanging except maybe that guitar solo part of What I’ve Done. I’m not even talking the peaceful serenity of the Easier to Run or In the End intro segments. This is way softer than all that. If you remember jumping up and down to the LP songs of the old days, use these to put you to sleep at night. Read the rest of this entry »
The remix album — the time-honored tradition of buying time between records. Often, these are inconsequential affairs (Limp Bizkit’s New Old Songs leaps to mind, for some reason), but if a band is smart, they can use this time-buying ploy to their advantage, redefining their sound somewhat, or at least reaching out for that elusive street credibility. The latter option is especially true for bands that have a big, big chart hit on their hands but little critical respect or reputation as a hip band. Which brings us to Linkin Park’s Reanimation, a generous 20-track remix record of their debut Hybrid Theory that the band has vaguely alluded to as their art project. Read the rest of this entry »
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