I’m a Rihanna fan, but even I am a little perplexed by the strong reviews for her latest album, Talk That Talk. I’ve seen several publications call it her best yet, which makes no sense to me.
Rihanna’s career peak came with the R&B/pop smash Good Girl Gone Bad, which I’ve likened to a modern-day Thriller, and its follow-up, Rated R, the dark, raw reaction to her encounter with domestic violence. Together, those albums cement Rihanna’s place in the upper echelon of modern pop stars.
I got a sense of the risks Miranda Lambert is taking on her new album, Four the Record, when I played the second track for my daughters.
The song, ‘Fine Tune,’ is a bluesy come-on with thick drums, a wailing lead guitar and a distortion effect on Lambert’s vocals — it’s more White Stripes than ‘White Liar.’ My girls, who are almost as big Miranda Lambert fans as I am, scrunched up their faces and said “Turn this off!” and “It hurts my ears!”
This week I’ll post mini-reviews of five albums I’ve bought in recent weeks. Overall this has been a very solid year for new music. My top ten is populated with albums I’ve already returned to again and again, albums that cover a wide variety of styles and genres.
It’s also split evenly between male and female artists, a nice bit of symmetry that I don’t see very often on my year-end list.
Paul Simon’s Graceland is famous for its blend of Simon’s signature pop sensibility with the sounds of South African music, including the a capella work of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Simon was accused of supporting apartheid by breaking a cultural embargo but the United Nations supported him.
The South African influence is certainly heard all over Graceland, but it’s easy to forget that Simon spins off in other directions, particularly at the end of the album.
Paul Simon’s Graceland is an all-time classic, his best work, a critical and commercial smash, one of the most beloved albums in history. It feels almost unnecessary to write about it because its story is so well-known, its rhythms and melodies long ago memorized.
What struck me as I reached this album in the chronology of my Paul Simon Weekends is that Graceland arrived at the lowest point in Simon’s career.
