Bob Seger - The Albums and the career, song by song thread

Dare I suggest the digital monster? Too many available tracks? Clean and sterile with digital ambience?

 

Certainly possible.
It is very possible to record dynamic lively music in digital, but if that's what they did here, it's a fail

 

I agree with that, although it probably took some getting used to and experience. Not just possible, but second nature now, for any type of music. But I could picture Seger and company tussling with this at the turn of the 90s. Tenor1, I'm hearing good (if not great) songs! But that could be a problem, too, if you have a solid album made up solely of solid album tracks. It seems like a Seger tradition to have at least one or two tracks that become fan favorites and hallmarks of his live show, and I haven't heard that yet.

 

The Real Love
Is a mid tempo bore. This was the single? This got to #24? Never heard it before and won't listen again.
Rating 2/10

 

Real At The Time
I like this one too. I understand the complaints about the production, and I share them. It doesn't annoy me enough to not listen to the song though. This week I am remembering why I always had a favorable impression of The Fire Inside even though I haven't listened too often - however the album does go on for a few songs longer than we are used to hearing so the 2nd half might start to drag a bit.

Seger always was a bit of perfectionist, but it seemed that, based on old interviews, he was trying to do a lot of first takes or early takes on backing tracks. Perhaps what we are hearing on this album is partly a production issue with Don Was, but also an issue with Seger not sticking to the old philosophy of getting "one good take" and then building from there.

 

Sightseeing
Best tune on the album so far. I like the Zydeco feel, Hornsby's accordian and the fiddle. Catchy melody in places and has a pretty nice lyric and feel. Not gonna set the world on fire but thoroughly enjoyable toe tapper
Rating 7/10

 

Real At The Time
Decent lyric but not much melody and that pounding snare gets old and annoying a couple has in before bashing me over the head for the whole song.
Rating 2/10

 

Probably the main digitally recorded album that comes to mind for me as great sounding, alive and vibrant, would be Joe Jackson's Big World, recorded live to two track digital in 1986.
The most famous is probably Dire Straits Brothers In Arms, from around the same time.

 

Always In My Heart

I think of you and I together
I picture you and I as one
When we sit there in
The firelight baby
When we wake to the morning sun
And though you may leave me
We're never apart
You're Always In My Heart

When you're standing at the window
With the moonlight in your hair
And you turn and smile
My favorite smile
I just have to stop and stare
And babe when you hold me
I go off the chart
You're Always In My Heart

Stay with me stay
Stay with me babe forever
Be by my side
Lets spend our lives together

I picture you and I together
I think of you and I for years
And if you're ever lost or worries Baby
I'll be there to calm your fears
I think that I've loved you
Right from the start

Always In My Heart
Always In My Heart

Songwriters: Bob Seger
Always In My Heart lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

This is probably the most clear and clean production so far, and listening to it as an individual song gives me more of an appreciation of it. I think when I listen to the album I tend to have switched off a little by the time this comes along.
We have one of Seger's piano ballads, and an excellent heartfelt vocal, that really does connect, for me at least.
If I had any kind of criticism of this, and it is only a light criticism, this is probably the most Eagles like song I personally have heard so far on the thread.

We actually have a barroom country/blues here, and I think Seger carries it off beautifully. It seems like the snare could be a little more dynamic, for this styling of song. I don't have any problem with eighties sounding drums, and for most of the song, the aggressive snare is no problem for me, but in a couple of spots it is a little overbearing.

I like the straight forward and heartfelt love lyric, and I just wonder somewhat if it is directed at a new love, or a reflection on a lost one. It isn't a fancy lyric, and it isn't a groundbreaking theme, but it comes across to me as heartfelt and really sells the song, with the vocal the Bob lays down for it.

The piano is lovely and it really gives us what we need to hang on to this one.
I also think the bridge works very well.
We get dynamics and a bit of soul and I end up enjoying this track quite a lot actually.

 

Always In My Heart
A perfectly heart felt romantic lyric, artfully crafted, with a beautiful melody soulfully sung. A timeless classic I have never heard before this AM. Wow.
Rating 10/10

 

Real at the Time - My favorite song on the album by quite a distance (no pun intended). Here's the Seger I knew and loved! Once again he displays his knack for songs about failed relationships, too. I know just what he means.

Always in My Heart - Love songs aren't his strong point, but this is one of his better ones. Love the piano, wish there were a bit more of it. I'm only just now noticing that the '80s excess that cropped up occasionally on the last album is wonderfully absent here, too. Not sure why I'm only noticing that with this song, perhaps because overuse of synths or gated drums could have really destroyed what is instead a beautiful performance!

 

Always in My Heart: Why the heavy reverb on his vocal? Mark, the production on this track seems just as bad as the rest of the album we've heard! It's just a bit more sparse. Another bad drum sound, almost as much reverb as the vocal. I don't think this was an early 90s production affectation - it's just senseless effects added to vocals and instruments. A good Seger ballad in general, again with a country feel. So why not go for something like this instead? Plain, straightforward, no studio B.S. on top. I wouldn't expect post-Brand New Morning Seger to release any track that unadorned, but a song like this is crying out for less studio trickery that adds nothing to the intended effect of a ballad.

 

Probably. It may just be that more sparse sound letting the track breathe a bit?

 

Yeah don't love the production on this track, but as it remains uncluttered the elegant beauty of the song shines through

 

Always in My Heart is a nice ballad. It's one of the better songs on the album but it's never been a favorite of mine. I think that's in large part because I feel disappointed with where the melody goes on the refrain. To my ears it's a letdown after the way the rest of the verse sets it up. There's not the melodic payoff that I've come to expect from Seger's best ballads.

 

The Fire Inside.

There's a hard moon risin' on the streets tonight
There's a reckless feeling in your heart as you head out tonight
Through the concrete canyons to the midtown light
Where the latest neon promises are burning bright

Past the open windows on the darker streets
Where unseen angry voices flash and children cry
Past the phony posers with their worn out lines
The tired new money dressed to the nines
The low life dealers with their bad designs
And the dilettantes with their open minds

You're out on the town, safe in the crowd
Ready to go for the ride
Searching the eyes, looking for clues
There's no way you can hide
The fire inside

Well you've been to the clubs and the discotheques
Where they deal one another from the bottom of a deck of promises
Where the cautious loners and emotional wrecks
Do an acting stretch as a way to hide the obvious
And the lights go down and they dance real close
And for one brief instant they pretend they're safe and warm

Then the beat gets louder and the mood is gone
The darkness scatters as the lights flash on
They hold one another just a little too long
And they move apart and then move on

On to the street, on to the next
Safe in the knowledge that they tried
Faking the smile, hiding the pain
Never satisfied
The fire inside
Fire inside

Now the hour is late and he thinks you're asleep
You listen to him dress and you listen to him leave
like you knew he would
You hear his car pull away in the street
Then you move to the door and you lock it when
he's gone for good

Then you walk to the window and stare at the moon
Riding high and lonesome through a starlit sky
And it comes to you how it all slips away
Youth and beauty are gone one day
No matter what you dream or feel or say
It ends in dust and disarray

Like wind on the plains, sand through the glass
Waves rolling in with the tide
Dreams die hard and we watch them erode
But we cannot be denied
The fire inside

Songwriters: Bob Seger
The Fire Inside lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

From Seger File ---------------------------------------------------
The Fire Inside, the single, was nominated for a Grammy.

This track was written before all the others -- the song is from a different point in Seger's life than the other tracks, and so for him it has a different feel to it

"'The Fire Inside' came very late in the album. Punch kept saying "You gotta finish that song."

Seger started writing The Fire Inside in September 1989 and finished in May 1991.

"I had three verses. It was a very long song, it was a very difficult track to get because it's 6 minutes long and the band had to cook, kinda in a Muscle Shoals way, but I wanted it more rock and roll, I wanted more snap to it. But it's difficult to keep up that energy for six minutes. I mean to keep it steady and humming, because you're telling this very, very intricate story. That was a pistol, getting that track. I think we recorded it four different times, over a period of a year in four different cities..every time we'd do a session we'd record it." Radio Interview, World Premier of The Fire Inside, with Redbeard.

Recently, a collector I know shared with me a legal pad with some handwritten lyrics to "The Fire Inside." To his knowledge, the pad came from an acquaintance of Seger's, after it was left behind at a recording session. The handwritten pages were subsequently sold on eBay for a stunning amount. What's most interesting to me is the first verse, which is totally different from the recorded version:
He's a hard guy standin' on a one-way street
One hand on his buckle, one hand on his cigarette
He looks right at you and you feel the heat
He's the kind that you meet when your heart's not ready yet.
All dressed in denim and cowboy boots
With eyes so blue they shoot right through your heart of glass
Wild on the edges and lean and tough
You wanna say somethin' but you can't speak up
You wanna start playin' but the game looks rough
So you tell yourself that enough is enough
And you turn on your heel, you try to walk away
But you stop in the middle of your stride
You're all mixed up and you're all out of breath
And there's no way you can hide
The Fire Inside.

It once occurred to me that a real fire -- in a California apartment building -- also figures in Seger's story, which has led me to wonder about the line "the fire inside." What is "the fire inside?" Is it something good that keeps you going, even though you know it all ends in dust and disarray? Or is it something bad that sends you out on the town, makes you screw up, even when you've screwed up before and sworn you never would again? Or is it sex, as in the Fire Down Below?
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This track was a single and it charted on the US Adult Contemporary chart at 45, the US rock chart at number 6, Canada at 35 and Germany at 54.

Looking through the lyrics, this seems to be about everybody wanting love, and how this has become problematic in the fact that nobody seems to really know what it is. So we get this mutated version of it, that is so much lust and self gratification, and the casualties are strewn across the landscape. Maybe not, but that's what it looks like to me.

We start off with a description of the lure of the neon lights that call the names of those looking for something, even if they aren't sure what it is.
Then we move into a description of the people out there in the neon distraction.
The first chorus sets the scene that we're in the club, hiding in the crowd, yet hoping that someone sees our signal for a connection.
The next verse section describes the whole club scene pretty well. It's a facade full of damaged folks that aren't likely to fulfill the need, yet the game plays out, and the people continue to damage and be damaged. The needs are not fulfilled, because the are misunderstood.
The last verse section looks at the often referenced midnight getaway. In this instance the woman wakes as the man sneaks out of the room, and that empty dissatisfaction eats at her, as she stares out of the window. The desire for connection isn't fulfilled, the regret of trying sinks in. A perpetual spiral of a game where nobody wins and the players all get more damaged with each round.

To me this is a really interesting lyric, and I think Seger shows a good insight into the singles scene and the downfalls it presents to the players in it.

Musically we have that relentless snare again, but we have a really cool piano part that keeps this track up there for me.
The song doesn't have too much in the way of dynamics, but I think that suits the theme of the song. We have this relentless searching, and relentless disappointment, of people searching for something they don't understand in a place where it can't be found.
Personally I stopped going to clubs and bars by the time I was 18 or 19, except when I was playing with the band, because the whole scene is just and empty dream full of loss and emptiness....

I like this song, but I want to like it more than I do, and it all seems to come down to the mindset behind the production and arrangement of this album.

 

The Fire Inside - I think those lyrics look better on paper than they work in the song. Having said that, I do like the song. I'm a little surprised it wasn't a bigger hit, but songs like this weren't really in style in 1991. (I was a freshman in college, so it was grunge everywhere right then...)

 

The Fire Inside (song)

This is a stunning song and it’s as good as anything Seger ever released. That piano work really carries the listener, and the lyrics keep unfolding in rapid fire succession. When I first heard this I was incredulous that I cared about a Bob Seger song again, as I had thought about him not much at all for the previous 4 years, which is a long time when you are in your 20’s. Lots of music passing by and shifting tastes, and then unexpectedly here’s this great song from an old favorite.

 

The Fire Inside: even the bad drum sound can't ruin this one! Obviously should have been the lead single. Possibly a sequel to "The Fire Down Below"? That stanza about gazing at the moon and pondering how everything ages then dies is a very good piece of writing. Everything about the song works: the lyrics, the pacing, his vocals. Again, so far into this album, I've yet to hear one track that puts me off! A shame and my fault that I wasn't acknowledging this in real time.

 

Listening to The Fire Inside song reminds me of Bruce Hornsby and the Range's Every Little Kiss. Both have that same relentless repeating drumbeat that's driving throughout while the piano is is doing the melody lines. I don't know if that's a good thing, but maybe they worked together on the album? I'd have to look back at the credits. I like Bruce's song better. I do find Bob's first early song lyrics to be intriguing.

 

Certainly this song would have been a better lead off single as some have hinted at, in spite of that relentless snare that all but ruins the lyrical nuance. Damn shame.

 

The Fire Inside is my favorite song from this album. Lyrically I may not enjoy it quite as much as past classic title tracks like Against the Wind and Like a Rock, but I really enjoy it musically. It's different and distinctive from his past rockers while still really feeling like a Seger song.

 

The Fire Inside
Great tune. Sounds like classic Seger. Though I did not remember the title I have heard this one many times.
Rating 10/10

 

As a CHR radio guy during the best-known period of this guy's career, I always found it interesting, the most-overplayed/overexposed part of his work, were the songs where he reminisced about his youth, focused on him talking about being old and out-of-touch, and not "in the demo" as far as his age was concerned.

It really starts with "Old Time Rock And Roll" receiving far more airplay on Oldies stations which normally would never touch a song as recent as 1979 in that era, and only really gained prominence after appearing in 1983's film Risky Business, at a period when Oldies radio was laser-focused on music from the Eisenhower-era up and until the first Nixon Administration (in my first Oldies station, we actually categorized the music via presidential eras). The Seger song broke the mold purely from its' swagger and subject matter, one of the few the format would make an exception for.

And from then on, here's this creaky, cranky old-guy-voice singin' about the good old days, from "Night Moves" forward, on every CHR station trying to convince the world, MTV was where it was at...all the while playing ballads of days gone by, from a guy the audience should have been reminded instead, of what a great rocker he was. I always thought that extremely ironic, that most listeners in that era, would know him either from his "old guy" ballads, or just that one solitary single where he complains about how he prefers old music, and he can't relate.

And as far at that version of the Top 40/Pop format was concerned, they didn't give him the opportunity to shake that image, until the sedond Eddie Murphy Beverly Hills Cop movie gave us "Shakedown" to stick into hot rotation.

 

The Fire Inside

I am not as good at analyzing why I love a song or what about it works for me as many of you on here, but I know this is one I've loved from first listen.

I love the breathless, incessant beat of the drums... The lyrics work for me, they have always stuck. The piano so integral to this song.

At 2:30 the song becomes really interesting. The Hornsby-like piano solo which I realise is actually The Professor. A minute later the foot is lifted from the gas, just a little. The lyrics create clear and vivid imagery.

youth and beauty are gone one day/dreams die hard and we watch them erode but we cannot be denied...

And then from 4:30 one of my favourite parts of any Seger track... The raised vocals of the title and then BURNING YOU UP, repeated and answered by the short cymbal crash, and back into the piano. My only wish is that the fade out happened later.

One of my top 10 Seger tracks.