Tennessee singer-songwriter Margo Price makes her third appearance on the blog, all for her debut album, 2016’s Midwest Farmer’s Daughter.
The first post marked the release of this album, one I enjoyed very much, and the discovery of a promising new talent. The second post, two years later, bemoaned the fact that I hadn’t listened to Price much at all since first encountering her, and noted that she had recently released a sophomore album.
A deep cut on The Rolling Stones’ classic 1972 album Exile on Main Street, ‘Casino Boogie’ is little more than a throat clearer before the excellent ‘Tumbling Dice.’
If the song seems to make no sense lyrically, that’s by design. Mick Jagger says the band utilized the “cut-up” technique popularized by William S. Burroughs to assemble the verses.
Closing out my look at the year 1984, here’s an album I had forgotten I knew so well: Diamond Life, the debut release by English band Sade (fronted by Nigerian-born Brit Sade Adu).
This release kicked off a 26-year career that saw every album (six in total) achieve multi-Platinum status. Most of those records came out between 1984 and 1992, with eight and 10-year gaps between the final two albums. But through it all, Sade’s smooth jazz meets R&B groove hit a consistent sweet spot.
My 12-year-old self never appreciated Wham! back in 1984 when they were one of the biggest things in music. I dismissed them as bubblegum pop, unworthy of serious consideration, even before I started regularly seeking out and listening to music.
I held the same opinion of Wham! as I discovered George Michael’s Faith (1987) and Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990), two albums of sophisticated songcraft that I loved and took as a sign that Michael had put aside his embarrassing past to become one of pop’s great artists.
Tina Turner released four solo albums between 1974 and 1979, both before and after her split from the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Those releases met with tepid results critically and commercially.
That all changed with 1984’s Private Dancer, an album that launched Turner to international superstardom and marked a departure from her R&B roots toward a much poppier sound. Recorded in England with a rotation of producers, the album spent nearly 40 weeks in Billboard’s top ten and went 5X Platinum in the U.S.
Meet Me In Montauk 