download amy winehouse back to black album free,

Download amy winehouse back to black deluxe album ,

download amy winehouse back to black mp3 free,

amy winehouse back to black album free mp3 download,

Download Amy Winehouse Back to Black Album Free

Originally released in 2006 the acclaimed Back To Black album was released again following the tragic death of Amy Winehouse in 2011. This was the second album from London-based chanteuse Amy Winehouse. The 2^nd release was the amy winehouse back to black deluxe album which was released back into the charts in June 2011. The album combined her unique jazzy vocals whilst combining strong and frank refrences and tales of love and heartbreak. Amy winehouse was a very talented songwriter with an amazing ear for melody, making the Amy Winehouse back to black album an essential purchase.

Download amy winehouse back to black deluxe album Free

The Amy Winehouse back to black production is an artistic mix of sophistication fusing a 60’s Rythem and Blues style blended with a contemporary 21st-century sound. BACK TO BLACK is a sumptuous-sounding collection of songs with a lush and soulfull undertone. Such album standouts include the classic ong “Tears Dry on Their Own” which has incorporated elements of Marvin Gaye,s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough. The album is densely filled with a musical history whilst also combining a dark, Portishead-esque ambience.

Download amy winehouse back to black mp3 free

There is no doubt that the Back to Black album, is one of the greatest soul albums, British or otherwise, to be released in the last decade. There has been a great demand by music fans to download amy winehouse back to black deluxe album since her death which has seen a album originally released in 2006 now available. The Back to Black album goes against the trend in R&B ensuring that is mature in both style and composition. The lyrics featured on the Amy amy winehouse back to black mp3 album deals with relationships from a grown-up perspective, and are honest, direct and, often, complicated: on “You Know I’m No Good”, she’s unapologetic about her unfaithfulness. But she can also be witty, as on “Me & Mrs Jones” when she berates a boyfriend with “You made me miss the Slick Rick gig”. Back to Black is a refreshingly mature soul album, the best of its kind for years.

1. “Rehab” (Amy Winehouse) – 3:35
2. “You Know I’m No Good” (Winehouse) – 4:17
3. “Me & Mr. Jones” (Winehouse) – 2:33
4. “Just Friends” (Winehouse) – 3:13
5. “Back to Black” (Winehouse, Mark Ronson) – 4:01
6. “Love Is A Losing Game” (Winehouse) – 2:35
7. “Tears Dry on Their Own” (Winehouse, Nickolas Ashford, Valerie Simpson) – 3:06
8. “Wake Up Alone” (Winehouse, Paul O’Duffy) – 3:42
9. “Some Unholy War” (Winehouse) – 2:22
10. “He Can Only Hold Her” (Winehouse, Richard Poindexter, Robert Poindexter) – 2:46

Includes the single ‘Rehab’.

download adele 21 album for free

download adele 21 album free

download adele 21 album free mp3

adele 21 full album free mp3 download

adele 21 album free mp3 download

download the adele 21 album for free

adele 21 album review

Adele originally broke onto the music scene four years ago with her first single chasing pavements. There was a mass appeal to her jazzy vocals and the fact that her songs were well written. Since then Adele has has gone on to have an excellent career. Her first performance was the Brits performance which cemented her as an up and coming star and a true artistof our generation. Fans of Adele can now download adele 21 album for free

download the adele 21 album for free

Adele was the first artist to achieve the alcolade of two top five hits in both the Official Singles Chart and the Official Albums Chart simultaneously which was only ever achieved by the beatles. The release of her 2nd album 21 was an instant no 1 smash in the UK charts and also hitting the American charts at no 1. Such was the impact of her 2nd album that her previous album then went back to no 2 with Adele having 2 albums in the chart at no 1 and no 2. Adele is both singer and songwriter. After taking time out, Adele has returns with 21; which as the title suggests confirms her progression and maturity as an artist and songwriter.

download adele 21 album free

The album 21was released in January 2011 in the UK and was the eagerly anticipated follow-up to her Grammy Award winning debut album, 19. The album 21 was produced and co-written by various talented musicians which include 19 producer Jim Abbiss and also UK hit-maker Eg White. Also collaborating on the album is Rick Rubin who is currently co-president of Columbia Records. Adele has been referred to as a current day image of Dusty Springfield, where the young female singer is a throwback to the legendary voices of yesteryear. Adele’s voice has technique, soulful quality, depth and sheer power that is breath taking. Beneath being an awesome and accomplished vocalist, it’s Adele’s ability to emote that carries her a cut above most of today’s singers. When Adele is angry, she burns through her vocals and when she hurts, she bleeds through her vocals. Those of us who listen are able to feel it with every song. For an artist who is only 21 years old, and having 2 albums at no 1 and no 2 whilst her album also held the no1 spot in America, it is scary to think what adele can accomplish in her musical career. No doubt she will go on to be a musical legend. The hit single “Rolling In The Deep.” has been the stand out track from the album whilst also hitting no 1 spot in the Uk Charts.

In the song “Someone Like You,” , the song burns with raw emotion that listeners will both feel and hear in every lyric. Another single that steals the show is ‘set fire to the rain which was produced and co-penned by Fraser T Smith (Taio Cruz‘s “Break Your Heart”; James Morrison‘s “Broken Strings”), “Set Fire To The Rain” is an aching power ballad that packs enough of a punch to cause jaws to drop to the floor.

The album 21 is a beautiful collection of honest songs straight from the heart. It’s an incredibly personal journey that many of us will relate to once we listen to the lyrics.The album will undoubtedly be a top contender for album of the year. Read the rest of the article below to download adele 21 album free.

jay z & kanye west album

Watch The Throne is, in many ways, a return home for Jay-Z and Kanye, who first worked together when West produced four standout tracks on Jay’s canonical The Blueprint. As a mini-documentary of Watch The Throne’s recording process highlights, Kanye was merely a fan – he was in the audience for Jay-Z’s Hard Knock Life Tour – until Jay-Z “minted” him, signing him to Roc-A-Fella Records. This time around, though, they take the microphone as near equals. Jay-Z has seven more years and millions more dollars – and he easily outraps Kanye, for the most part – but both have proven (and West most recently) that they are at the top of the hip hop game. The potential of a collaborative album is scintillating.

The result is only slightly less so, surpassing the bleakest estimates by leaps and bounds. This is no Blueprint, nor does it reach the artistry of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, but neither is it a phoned-in money grab. The songs alternate between menacing, euphoric, and profound, on top of beats that follow the same patterns. A slew of talented producers steer the album away from the lush interplay of Kanye’s recent work and the pop sheen of The Blueprint III, toward a middle ground that removes both artists from comfort zones without sounding uncomfortable. That Jay-Z and Kanye decided to expand the Throne project from an EP to a full-length album shows that they enjoyed the process and that they had something to say.

Of course, much of what they have to say is sheer braggadocio. This isn’t humility rap, not by a longshot. Verses sag under the weight of brand names – Hublot and Rolex; Maybach, Benz, and Lamborghini; Gucci, Manolo, Margiela, and more. Both rappers reference their art collections and neither shies away from flaunting their wealth. Of course, if you expected an album from two of the top-paid rappers alive – an album with gold-plated cover art, no less – to be void of posturing, you’re crazy.  Kanye incessantly uses fashion as a status check, both on and off record; Jay-Z isn’t just a businessman, he’s a business, man. As he raps on “Ni**as In Paris,” “The Nets could go 0 for 82 and I’d look at you like this shit gravy.”

But Watch The Throne is more than just brags and boasts. This is a shot at legacy. As Jay lays out just a few lines later, “I’m liable to be go Michael/Take your pick: Jackson, Tyson, Jordan (Game 6).” The Game 6 addendum is telling. Jay-Z and Kanye West aren’t content with their place among the greats – they still want to be legends in their finest hour, remembered for generations. Kanye rapped on last year’s “Monster,” “I’m living the future so the present is my past.” Jay-Z says it in a more kingly way here, on “Made In America”: “Built a republic, that still stands/I’m tryna lead a nation to leave to my little mans.”

The hallmarks of legacy and family are imprinted all over this album, with both rappers focusing on generations past and future. On “New Day,” in particular, the pair address future scions over a RZA-aided beat that distorts Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” nearly beyond recognition. It’s a touching and sometimes vulnerable track that combines introspection with advice to future progeny. “Teach ya good values so you cherish it,” spits Jay. “It took me 26 years to find my path/My only job is cut the time in half.” Kanye joins in as well, with promises for the future. “I’ll never let my son have an ego/He’ll be nice to everyone, wherever we go.” Here more than anywhere on Watch The Throne, though, the differences between Kanye and Jay are laid bare. Jay is restrained and confident, while West seizes the track as an opportunity to defend himself in the form of his offspring: “I just want ‘em to have an easy life/Not like Yeezy life/Just want ‘em to be someone people like/Don’t want ‘em to be hated all the time judged/Don’t be like your daddy that would never budge.” Methinks he doth protest a whole bunch, and it makes him look a little less regal.

The family talk isn’t limited to sons and daughters, either. In another moment that highlights the differences in the two rappers’ lives, Jay-Z follows a sour-grapes Kanye verse with adoration for his wife Beyonce, saying, “You belong in museums/You belong in vintage clothes crushing the whole building/You belong with ni**as who used to be known for dope dealin’/You too dope for any of those civilians.” On “Welcome To The Jungle,” Jay reflects on the deaths of his father, uncle, and nephew, which left him “paralyzed by the pain,” and on “Made In America” Kanye thanks his mother’s for kickstarting his career. These men may be at the top of the hip hop world, but they haven’t stopped looking around.

Find it at: Insound Vinyl | eMusic | Amazon MP3 & CD

The self-destructive tortured-artist routine was bullshit when Kurt Cobain did it, it was bullshit when Elliott Smith did it, and it’s bullshit now. As anyone who’s seen the video of Amy Winehouse desperately finger-fumbling her way through “Back to Black” at the MTV Europe Video Music Awards knows, her look-how-messed-I-am public persona is now screwing up her art something fierce. So instead of a new record, Americans are now getting a modified version of Frank, her first album, originally released four years ago and subsequently dissed by the artist herself. Its two weakest links, “Know You Now” and a pointless cover of standard “Moody’s Mood for Love”, have been yanked out of the original running order and appended as hidden penalty tracks.

Winehouse has a hell of a voice, even when she imitates her favorite jazz vocalists– especially Billie Holiday– much too closely. (Just in case anybody misses the idea that she’s supposed to be a jazz singer who’s somehow stumbled into a neo-soul record, Frank begins with a little fragment of Winehouse scat-singing, and the chorus of “October Song” doesn’t just namedrop Sarah Vaughan but lifts its melody from “Lullaby of Birdland”.) None of her songs here are as indelible as “Rehab” or as cutting as “You Know I’m No Good”– and the best are co-written with Nas and Fugees collaborator Salaam Remi– but you can hear the development of the high-powered songwriter she turned into on Back to Black in the snarky character sketch “F*** Me Pumps” and in the way the sharp-nailed ballad “You Sent Me Flying” breaks into a Soul II Soul beat halfway through. And although she hasn’t quite nailed the 1972 vibe of her later record (despite some corny vintage-vinyl sound effects), a couple of her stylistic experiments pay off, especially the high-drama soul loop that underpins “In My Bed”.

But Winehouse’s slow public wreck isn’t just an unfortunate thing that’s happening to someone who happens to be a star, it’s part of her act, and has been from the get-go– which means it makes her audience complicit in it. Her favorite lyrical topic, even on her debut, is loving not wisely but too well; on “Amy Amy Amy”, she’s gently wagging a finger at herself about her fondness for bad-news boys. And her deliberate affectation of Holiday’s unmistakable vocal tics can’t help but suggest the narrative we’re supposed to buy into: “Great singer, tragically destroyed by her unhappy private life and bad habits, who turned her pain into universal art.” (What are we as her audience supposed to do? Stage an intervention? Well, we can at least think very carefully about what our participation in that narrative means. And who are we to say we wish she’d stop going on about how she doesn’t need any help and get some goddamn help already? Not vultures, that’s who.) Winehouse is good enough that she was worth paying attention to for her music alone before her drama started ruining it, but in the light of her subsequent career, Frank comes off as the first chapter in the Romantic myth of the poet who feels too deeply and ends up killing herself for her audience’s entertainment. And that is some bullshit.

It is rare for such a young performer to debut with such assurance, confidence and to such instant acclaim, but North London sensation Amy Winehouse already has a reputation that many far more seasoned artists would swap their gold discs for.

Winehouse combines a distinctive ’20 a day’ voice with a serious appreciation of female jazz & soul heroes (Sarah Vaughan’s scatting style seeps through Amy’s vocal ad-libs as well as getting a name check). She combines considerable jazz guitar ability with a classic approach which produces a contemporary, quirky, up front, tongue in cheek and risqué lyrics. Her version of the eternally hip jazz track “Moody’s Mood For Love” which rides over a dub reggae rhythm demonstrates this attitude it looks back in order to know where its going and although in print this idea might raise a musical eyebrow in reality it sounds like a perfect partnership.

The first single “Stronger Than Me” contains all of these qualities and proves that jazz influenced contemporary soul neednt be safe or sullied by the dinner or ‘smooth’ prefixes.

Lyrically fresh and uncompromising, the only occasional weaknesses across the collection are the sometimes obtrusive programmed beats but recent radio & television appearances confirm that Winehouse live has a wonderfully organic sound that supports her approach well.

Amy’s influences (Vaughan, Dinah Washington and the more contemporary like Badu et al) are obvious but not over powering and Winehouse has enough attitude, talent and chutzpah to make any comparisons fleeting and pointless. In fact on the delicious, lush and soulful “Put It In The Box” she out Badu’s Erykah brilliantly using a similar female perspective on broken relationships to get her point across very directly.

This is Amy’s first release and augurs well for her future. If this is what the young lady is capable of at such an early stage it must be pretty certain that this will be the first in a long line of well crafted, funky & feisty releases.

adele 19 album review

It’s easy to get the wrong impression about Adele. She looks like another Kate Nash, all Top Shop dresses and haircuts that only a mother could love. And the fact that she’s been a fuss on MySpace for a while only ups the sense of trepidation. Add to that a Later… debut which came filled to the brim with nervous caterwauling, and hopes for her album aren’t pitched particularly high.

This is why it’s such a shock that it’s a genuinely touching, maturely considered and brilliantly sung opus that belies her titular age. Listening to it for the first time is the aural equivalent of walking into one of those oh-so-quirky little bars that you expect to be filled with bland scenesters and discovering that everyone within is friendly and they’re serving the finest soul food to fill you up with.

Pitching up somewhere between blues, folk and jazz, she’s included something for everyone without ever pandering to a particular trend. Her melodies exude warmth, her singing is occasionally stunning and, in the dramatic Hometown Glory, the spiky cool of Cold Shoulder (which is unexpectedly reminiscent of Shara Nelson-era Massive Attack) and the piano epic Make You Feel My Love, she has tracks that make Lily Allen and Kate Nash sound every bit as ordinary as they are.

That said, there is a note of caution to be sounded. There’s a danger of the hyperbole exceeding the actual potential here: The Brit Awards made her their first ever winner of the Critics’ Choice award and the BBC’s Sound of 2008 list named her as the most promising new music talent in UK, while one magazine compared her songbook with Leonard Cohen’s! While she is undoubtedly good, she’s not quite worthy of those accolades yet, as her voice lacks a little soul and her songwriting a little depth.

Adele is a fine prospect and a genuine talent, but just like Amy Winehouse, who went to the same performing arts school, her brilliance will truly shine when she’s a little further into her career – though hopefully, she’ll be better at handling the astronomical fame that awaits her than the crumbling Mrs Fielder-Civil.

19 is a great start, a solid base to build a career on and a wonderful reminder of just how great our home grown talent can be. Just goes to show that the old adage is true – you really can’t go judging a pop star by their cover.

· 1 Daydreamer

· 2 Best for Last

· 3 Chasing Pavements

· 4 Cold Shoulder

· 5 Crazy for You

· 6 Melt My Heart to Stone

· 7 First Love

· 8 Right as Rain

· 9 Make You Feel My Love

· 10 My Same

· 11 Tired

· 12 Hometown Glory

The iTunes/MySpace revolution has speeded up the pop process to such an extent that a new act barely has time to draw breath before being acclaimed in ever-growing hyperbole and seeing their debut album go straight to No 1.

But, though superficially impressive, this is often disastrous for the artist’s long-term prospects, destroying the vital growth period during which musicians develop their performing acumen, musical tastes, and the kind of world-view obtained only through years of hard knocks. Instead, artists are now catapulted up the pop mountainside and expected to grab hold of whatever outcrop is within their grasp, and grimly hold on for dear life. To then criticise and condemn an Amy Winehouse when she struggles seems churlish at best, and often downright vindictive.

Adele Adkins, another pupil from the Brit performing arts school attended by Amy and Kate Nash, is the latest recipient of this hype. Am I the only one to find something slightly sinister in the way we’re being brow-beaten into unanimous acclaim for her modest talents, with Adele acclaimed in some BBC poll of industry insiders as “the sound of 2008″ and virtually guaranteed a Brit Award before anyone’s actually heard her album? Let’s see: stage school background, voting for your favourite, straight in at No 1 – is this anything more than the extension of Cowell-ist principles from mainstream pop to those areas of music that used to be considered more personal and

Beyonce 4 album Review

(EW.com) — If show business were high school (and isn’t it, really?), Beyoncé would be a front-runner for valedictorian.

She’s a class act on and off the charts, a can-do girl who shares her gifts with everyone while keeping her beyond-fabulous life — the Obamas on speed dial, Jay-Z at the dinner table — largely to herself.

Over the course of her three previous records, she’s matured from Destiny’s Child-hood into a formidable solo hitmaker with two of pop music’s most transcendent chart-toppers, ”Crazy in Love” and ”Single Ladies,” tucked in the pocket of her Deréon jeans.

So why does it feel like Beyoncé is struggling so hard to prove herself on “4?” The album is an every-song-for-itself welter of conflicting ambitions: It wants to be cutting-edge but familiar, accessible but artistic, hot-blooded but strictly impersonal.

Those tensions hurt most in its lumbering first half, a defiant bird flipped at anyone expecting out-of-the-box radio killers. Instead, we get a sleepy recital of ballads, kicked off by the arid Prince-ipality of ”1+1” and ”I Miss You,” in which Bey pants and sweats and grunts (except, you know, sexy-like), her voice climbing ever higher in search of an octave big enough to hold it.

Pop & Hiss

The L.A. Times music blog

« Previous Post | Pop & Hiss Home | Next Post »

Album review: Beyonce’s ’4′

June 28, 2011 |  8:30 am

28

Beyoncé Knowles isn’t worried chasing fads, though she’s well aware of them. Over the years, she’s learned how to harness them so effortlessly that they seem like her ideas. Take the standout track on her new album, “4,” “I Miss You,” a slow-burn jam of desire co-written by Odd Future-affiliated crooner Frank Ocean. In its beginning moments, the song draws on the sparse wave of recent music by British band the xx by using silence as a weapon, a notion that extends across the 12-song album.

At its best, “4” pushes at the edges of pop, but unlike on her best songs, “Crazy in Love” and “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” she does this more with seduction than sauciness. The first four tracks are ballads, each of a different variety, and each striking in its own way. “Best Thing I Never Had” sends drum rolls through an echo chamber in a defiant track destined to offer solace in heartbroken bedrooms around the world. Even “Party,” co-written by Kanye West and featuring Andre 3000 of Outkast, is a slow-paced number that sounds like a half-speed remix of a Human League song.

The second half of the record, however, picks up, and upends the silent contemplation with the kind of dance floor fury the Queen of R&B does best. Taken together, “4” is a surprising, confident turn, even if the surprises are of a subtler variety.

On Tuesday, Beyonce drops “4,” as in her fourth album. It’s also her fourth-best album, as in her worst.

Both cool and low-key, its subdued tone suggests that she’s turning an intimate new leaf. Surprise! She isn’t. Instead, Beyonce sounds more precise and distant than ever, making these mid-tempo tunes feel vexing at first, then dull. Unlike Sade and Prince — her mysterious, ultra-private forebears — Beyonce is becoming a puzzle that might not be worth solving.

The album’s oomph is drained instantly with the Prince-pantomime of “1 + 1.” It’s a stark ballad about desire, but Beyonce’s pleading comes from the emotive one-size-fits-all comfort zone that’s become her default. “I don’t know much about fighting,” she sings in a fiery, too-familiar voice. “But I know that I will fight for you.”

She spends the rest of the album fighting to make her words sound more believable. But with “I Miss You,” it’s hard to know which Beyonce to trust. Over an airy, puttering beat, she double-tracks her apologies to an absent lover: One Beyonce coos softly in our ear while the other wails for our attention from a distance. “The words don’t ever seem to come out right,” the battling Beyonces sing. “But I still mean ’em.”

Fans are used to this sort of thing. With her 2008 album, “I Am . . . Sasha Fierce,” Beyonce introduced an alter ego to help explore her wild side — which was actually the side we’d been exposed to all along. The album was split in two with Ms. Fierce specializing in the dance-floor urgency that made Beyonce’s 2003 debut, “Dangerously in Love,” so riveting. Meanwhile, we learned that the “real” Beyonce was into bland, pseudo-triumphal balladry, a trend she unfortunately continues here with the mascara-smudging piffle of “I Was Here” and “Best Thing I Never Had.”

She’s still at her best when she’s singing in the service of others. “Run the World (Girls)” is a classic Beyonce empowerment anthem where the message is as dizzying as the beat. As if leading a college marching band into a Caribbean street carnival, she belts out a disjointed feminist salvo, saluting a generation of women who “bear the children” and are “smart enough to make these millions.” It’s the final track on “4,” putting an exclamation point on an album that doesn’t really deserve one.

And whether it was intentional or not, “4” puts Beyonce in the company of other pop greats who have used that same number to celebrate their respective arrivals at new creative summits. Gap Band, Zapp and Led Zeppelin each released enduring “IV” albums that memorialized some of their finest hours.

Beyonce’s “4” won’t go down in the books like that. It smacks of a once-great blockbuster movie franchise sadly spinning its wheels.

Randy Crawford – Best of

Rare vocal beauty is what Randy Crawford possesses along with loads of smoldering passion and deep emotional involvement with the meaning of any song this wonderous singer choses to do! This stunning collection is a great starting point for those beginning a musical journey with one the the greatest singers ever or for those of us already familiar with this classic artist who the more you play the more you fall in love! “Give Me The Night” is a soulfully dreamy opener that flows so beautifully into Randy’s athem “Street Life” with The Jazz Crusaders featuring Joe Sample on keyboards which was a huge success for Miss Crawford. “Street Life” was also used in the soundtrack of the Burt Reynold’s film “Sharky’s Machine” along with great songs by Sarah Vaughan and Peggy Lee and Randy truly shines alongside these legends and makes one realize that this is indeed another legendary singer! “One Hello” is a gorgeous ballad that Randy turns inside out and sings with such passion that I get a rush every time but for those who need more convincing you will go no further than her extraordinary definitive performance of the John Lennon classic “Imagine” that gets a standing ovation everytime when Miss Crawford performs this in concert!! The beauty of this version is spellbinding as is Randy’s smoldering vocal on “Who’s Crying Now” which features a flowing jazzy arrangement with a soulful sax plus Joe Sample on keyboards! Standouts abound in this awesome collection and a true classic is what becomes of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heavens Door” in Randy’s hands. Soul infused vocal passion is stunning in this masterpiece with guest artists Eric Clapton and David Sanborn perfectly complimenting Miss Crawford who gives the performance of a lifetime and this should have received a Grammy Award!! For shame to the music industry for not really getting behind this incredible artist who is a once in a lifetime rare experience!!! Do not miss this collection or artist if you love great vocals and the closing self-penned “In My Life” is a revealing classic while “Everything Must Change” is another vocal masterpiece among the many in this priceless collection!! Bravo Randy!!! You are truly an awesome wonder…

Randy Crawford’s greatest hits covers her impressive years within the music business. Her voice is so dynamic, raw and very much deserves to be among the legends such as Ella, Bille and Etta, but I don’t think she’s seen that way. Street Life is one of my all time favorite songs. Cajun Moon would have to be the second. The greatest hits piece also emphasizes Randy’s broad personal taste in music. She’s not narrow minded which I love. There is a wonderful version of Bob Dylan’s Knocking on Heaven’s Door, which she simply does justice to. Also a jazzy version of the Steve Perry/Journey song Who’s Cryin Now which I love. Steve Perry is the greatest voice in rock. He is so hot and powerful. I fear anyone taking on a song that has his trademark on it, but Randy does a good job with it. I was disappointed that songs like Bye Bye did not make this album. She’s certaintly had more good songs over the years than this album collected, but it’s still worth buying.

• Culture
• Music
• Pop and rock

Bruno Mars: Doo-Wops & Hooligans – review

Bruno Mars’s pop nous is spoiled by some unfortunate vegetable metaphors, says Alexis Petridis

·

• • Share105
  • reddit this
• Comments (23)

·

• • Alexis Petridis
  • guardian.co.uk, Thursday 20 January 2011 15.29 GMT
  • Article history

Carrot and shtick … Bruno Mars

The path from star producer to pop phenomenon is traditionally a tricky one to navigate, but no one seems to have told 25-year-old Hawaiian Bruno Mars. He currently sits at No 1 in the UK singles chart with Grenade. Its predecessor, Just the Way You Are, somehow contrived to reach No 1 twice: the second time replacing Cee Lo Green’s Fuck You, one of a multitude of hits Mars co-wrote and produced before his own career as a teen heart-throb kicked off.

Buy it from

1. Buy the CD
2. Download as MP3
4. Bruno Mars
5. Doo-Wops and Hooligans
6. Atlantic
7. 2011

How has this happened? His debut album suggests his way with a tune is pretty inarguable, and he’s certainly confident in essaying different musical styles. Over the course of its 35 minutes, Doo Wops and Hooligans offers takes on Michael Jacksonish pop soul, Coldplay-style arena rock and a stab at 1960s R&B. The former mode yields most of the album’s best moments – if Jackson’s vault of unfinished and unreleased material had contained anything as melodically strong as Grenade, then the recent compilation Michael might have seemed substantially less gratuitous and ghoulish – but the album’s default setting recalls Mars’s contribution to Travie McCoy’s Billionaire: a kind of trainer-bra version of Jack Johnson’s laid-back soft rock, with gentle reggae inflections, hang-loose sentiments and all. You might reasonably suggest diluting Jack Johnson’s sound amounts to watering down water for the benefit of those who find water a bit too heady and flavoursome, and you’d have a point. There comes a moment during Count on Me where you start to boggle that Britain’s teens are being fed something so sugary without Jamie Oliver getting a campaign up about it.

The saccharine sound isn’t the only problem. The album’s awkward title (“you call your girl your doo-wop,” explained Mars, rather prompting the response: who does? Where? Who’s this “you”?) implies that Mars might have an ungainly way with words, and so it proves. There is Grenade, on which he expresses his unrequited devotion via a series of violent metaphors so overblown they somehow suggest Bruno Mars can’t leave the house without someone trying to lob an anti-personnel weapon at him, shoot him through the head, stab him, or push him in the path of a train – a state of affairs that a cruel observer might suggest is less inexplicable if you’ve heard the rest of his album. There is Our First Time, which is clearly intended as a tender reggae-influenced ballad about encouraging a recalcitrant young lady to yield her all – and we’re presumably all agreed that what pop music’s really been in desperate need of recently is a reggae-influenced ballad about encouraging a young lady to yield her all – but ends up sounding deeply creepy: when Mars sings: “Here we are in this big old empty room,” you somehow picture him reaching for the duct tape in a deserted warehouse as the object of his affections groggily emerges from a drugged stupor. There is The Lazy Song, which gets no further than the second verse before Mars – nothing if not keen to keep his fans abreast of his every activity in a world of 360-degree connectivity – announces that he’s planning on having a wank: “Turn the TV on, throw my hand in my pants, no one’s gonna tell me I can’t.”

And there is Runaway Baby, on which Bruno Mars compares his penis to a carrot. “So many eager young bunnies,” he sighs, “and they all got to share it.” There are obviously worse vegetables to compare your penis to – the brussels sprout and the jerusalem artichoke, for example – but it’s still an image that seems destined to encourage speculation about exactly what Mars means. It’s bright orange and covered in mud? He sprays it with fungicide to discourage powdery mildew? He dangles it in front of a donkey as an incentive? Furthermore, it’s an image that haunts the rest of the song. He advises the object of his affections not to get too attached – “Lord knows I’m a rolling stone” – and one thinks: yeah, leaving town before word gets around about your peculiar carrot-like penis.

Frustratingly, Doo-Wops & Hooligans ends by suggesting it could have been far more interesting than it is. Released on an EP before the album came out, The Other Side features Cee Lo Green and B.O.B. More importantly, it harnesses Mars’s infallible melodic facility to a lyric packed with dark intimations and a sound somewhere between the Motown pastiche of Fuck You and the clattering breakbeats of early hardcore rave. It’s not exactly groundbreaking, but you have to say it’s a distinct improvement on what’s come before. Why he chose to abandon that style in favour of the whole lukewarm acoustic pop-reggae/penis-like-a-carrot angle seems a bit mysterious. Until you look at the sales figures and sighingly conclude there’s no accounting for taste.

Lady gaga – Album review

Hype’ is a disgusting word. But when an album, which was a self-declared phenomenon before it was even an album, appears to be an experiment in hype itself, it becomes an unavoidable part of the conversation. There’s been a suspicion in the epic run-up to the release of Lady Gaga‘s second-and-a-half album that she’s just been being deliberately ridiculous just to piss people off. But then, having a go at a pop star for being ridiculous is in itself as ridiculous as having a go at a brain surgeon for being too hung up on all the neurosurgery.

There’s another possibility here though. In our man Peter Robinson’s (rather amazing) cover feature the other week, she expressed genuine surprise that people found ‘Born This Way’ the song something of an ‘Express Yourself’ parody. The suggestion actually moved her to tears. It’s in the nature of artists to miss the blindingly obvious about their own work.

But for the entire world to have the exact same instantaneous reaction, to the point where the words ‘Express Yourself’ began trending on Twitter, suggests that comparison holds water. You’d think somebody – somebody – in her team could have noticed. It’s just possible that Gaga is now such a powerful entity that everybody was just too scared of losing their jobs to point it out.

It would certainly bear out the chain of events that led to that appalling, badly-photoshopped mess of a cover image getting signed off. And if that’s the case then we really are in new territory for mainstream pop music, where somebody at the absolute peak of commercial heaviosity is able to operate with the artistic imperative of a David Bowie without an iota of outside interference. What you definitely cannot fault about this album is the scale of its artistic ambition.

One thing that much-debated ‘Born This Way’ album cover does get right is the record’s obsession with the fusion of flesh and metal. As if Gaga, having already (in her own head at least) fused herself with her fanbase to create a singular entity, she wants to weld physically to her synthesisers as if to create one all-powerful dreadnought of self-empowerment. For the most part this is one relentless torrent of heavy-metal-rave-pop. At the very least it’s a triumph in sound engineering.

‘Hair’ is an empowerment anthem using the simple image of the wind blowing through a person’s hair to illuminate the album’s Love-Yourself-And-Let-It-All-Hang-Out message way more effectively than the title track. It trumps it once again by being quite the gayest thing you will ever hear for a long time. On the same tip is ‘Bad Kids’, a homage to the NYC club kids era, hammering home the freak message to the Little Monsters, but with a chorus that is adorable instantly and forever.

‘Bloody Mary’ is a serene flipside to ‘Judas’ this time using Ms Magdalene to do much the same job, as dainty plucked strings careen around filthy beats to create something weirdly graceful. And ‘Americano’, a Hispanic upgrade of ‘Alejandro’ which riffs on both Evita and Santa Esmerelda’s ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’, succeeds because it is so colourfully deranged. Elsewhere the sci-fi goth night-stalk ‘Electric Chapel’ perhaps nails the record’s blood-and-chrome aesthetics most effectively of all.

Things get rather knottier when the beats drop heavier. ‘Schei?e’, which channels Miss Kittin doing a rave take on Madonna’s ‘Erotica’ strides into a commanding pop song and comes out a triumph. ‘Government Hooker’ drops down into freeform industrial techno impressively early on in the tracklist, but there’s scant evidence of any real political message in lines like “Put your hands on me, John F Kennedy”. And ‘Heavy Metal Lover’s staccato filth-fest is impressively murky but the relentless smut ends up sounding daft. The ostentatious ‘Highway Unicorn (Road To Love)’ aims for some kind of weird chamber-rave-metal-concerto yet comes out a total mess.

But then at the end, something spectacular happens. Skynet is given a rest and it emerges again that when Gaga does do pure emotion, she does it exceptionally well. ‘You And I’ is a quite epic exercise in futurist honky-tonk, apparently directed to a lesbian lover or a drag queen. And finally, the gleaming ‘The Edge Of Glory’ (apparently a love song to her late grandfather, yet with a romantic twist) finds her dancing “On the edge of something final we call life tonight” in the most ecstatic pop serenade this woman has ever come up with.

That beautiful simplicity reminds us that Lady Gaga can be guilty of trying too hard. But do you really think that’s wrong? ‘Born This Way’ doesn’t get everything right. It’s not the clarion to the dispossessed that it thinks it is. And after pushing so hard in this direction, she should probably strip it back to just her and a piano next time if she really wants to shock. Because rather than an exercise in hype, what ‘Born This Way’ really is an exercise in the pushing of everything to its ultimate degree. And for all the black, white and silver, it passes that test with flying colours. Dan Martin

Jessy j album Review

Do It Like A Dude’ posited Jessie J as a rival to the international hard-hitters – a new Lady Gaga, an equally fearless Rihanna. With over a million YouTube views, and selling over 30,000 copies, it was a brash, bolshy entrance. Follow-up single ‘Price Tag’ nabbed her a UK Number One. So, stomp, stomp she’s arrived. Or has she?

Sure, she’s The Sound Of 2011. But for which country? Nothing on ‘Who You Are’ links Jessie to being English – apart from her occasional spoken segments, and a fondness for the word ‘mandem’. Even live track ‘Big White Room’, which showcases her undeniably potent voice, falls flat due to mid-song chattering. This is an album of singles for other artists. There’s Rihanna Jessie (‘Do It…’), Perry Jessie (‘Abracadabra’), Pixie Jessie (‘Mamma Knows Best’), Ellie Jessie (‘Big White Room’). Given Jessie’s songwriter past, an identity crisis was always a risk. But, let’s take her new transatlanticism as a moot point, and move on.

Thematically, ‘Who You Are’ sticks to Sesame Street topics such as staying true to who you are and following your dream. Like a big singing version of that inspirational cat poster, Jessie veers between stage school confidence and motivational speaker. The reggae-tinged ‘Stand Up’ warns that “If you don’t reach for the moon then you can’t follow the stars”, while ‘Rainbow’’s cutting social commentary begins “He grew up in the city/Had a lot of money/ Sponging off his daddy all the time”, before offering the staggering conclusion that “What I’m saying is that we’re all alive”.

Weirdest of all, though, is that no matter how much Jessie J sings about being herself, we don’t really ever get a sense of who, or what, that is. Even on personal tracks like ‘Nobody’s Perfect’, everything’s a bit vague. “When I’m nervous, I have this thing where I talk too much”, she warbles. ‘Who’s Laughing Now’ offers a little insight, but it’s via her grind and career rather than who Jessie actually is. Incidentally, it also has one of the best lines on the album: “Oh Jessie I saw you on YouTube/I tagged us in photos from when we was at school”.

It’s cheeky, relevant, and fresh. It’s everything Jessie’s been pegged to be. Elsewhere, the Dr Luke-produced ‘Abracadabra’ sounds like ‘Teenage Dream’ covered by ‘Million Dollar Bill’-era Whitney. It’s brilliant. But unfortunately it’s a flash that’s shortly over. The release of ‘Who You Are’ was brought forward a month, in response to popular demand. If only Island had paused and allowed Jessie to answer the begged question of the album’s title for herself.