I love Eric Carmen, but geez, what a prima donna. He seemed to have issues with everyone. His bio makes me want to throw up at times, very full of himself even more so that others in the biz. He is another that could write good material but most of the songs on his albums really aren’t very good imo. He was a good singles artist, though in his previous band, with other input, I think he was better at fleshing out the songs. He always blamed his producers; maybe that’s true. His debit s/t is a gem though, and maybe the blame is well placed as the great Jimmy Ienner produced it, and Hungry Eyes, another Carmen classic imo.
I Will Survive has been overplayed and I can understand why some hate it so much, but I do think it's one of the strongest non-Donna Summer disco diva moments of the disco era. Does annoy me I can't find the original single version on streaming services, either the really long original 12"/album mix of the song, or latter re-recordings. Tragedy is a great track. I never really thought about it before until someone above pointed out, but it does sound like the Gibbs taking note of Giorgio Moroder and how much more electronic it was than their prior disco smashes.
Granted we're going so far into the future this artist wasn't even alive at the time, but I always think of Clive Davis' relationship with Kelly Clarkson. She had scored a massive smash album with "Breakaway" and decided with the followup that she was going to do what she wanted and take a hand in writing her songs. Clive was furious at her "betrayal" by wanting to sing her own compositions instead of these sure-fire hits from outsider songwriters that would keep her high on the chart to the point where he deliberately personally called radio stations telling them to not play tracks off "My December" to punish the "spoiled brat" for asserting that she wanted to be more of an artist than a pop star. The album bombed and then she came back doing what Clive wanted and suddenly she was topping the charts again because Clive had the radio embargo lifted on her because she was "behaving" again. Ever since that I've hated him. Not that I like Kelly Clarkson's music or anything but the ways he went to punish her for the simple crime of wanting to be a little more invested on the artist side of her career spoke volumes.
I like Tragedy a lot, but the biggest issue as a whole with the Spirits Having Flown record (and there's some great stuff on there) is that Barry is front and center with the damn falsetto almost the entire thing. It worked on some of the previous singles but he pretty much was singing in falsetto voice the whole album with a couple exceptions. A lot of people ignore Living Eyes because "He's A Liar" was a terrible single decision and it came out at a time where disco was a four letter word, but Barry's vocals on that were much better because he wasn't squeaking throughout the whole thing
"Stumblin' In" with Suzi Quatro & Chris Norman was #2 in the German singles chart, 9 weeks in the top 10 and #30 in the year-end singles chart. "Tragedy" from the Bee Gees was #2 in the German singles chart, 10 weeks in the top 10 and #29 in the year-end singles chart. Both songs were as close together as in the Hot 100 issue of April 21.
Really? You hate artists that want to be, you know, artists? Sure, they are paid to do what they do, and at least part of that payment is for their artistic sensibility. To paraphrase the immortal words of Ricky Nelson: 'if my producer's songs were all I sang, I'd rather drive a truck'. I'm sure there are many examples of artists who did the songs they wanted to do against the wishes of their producers and it turned out just fine. I can think of one good example: the Beatles refused to cover 'How Do You Do It'. It became a #1 hit for Gerry and the Pacemakers. Instead they did Please Please Me, their own song. That worked out pretty well, too!
Yup. The Hall of Fame is loaded with artists who are there because they played the game their way and that's why they stood out. The greatest artists ever were the ones who followed their own muse.
By 1978, the ex-Beatles were in different places in their lives. John Lennon was living in semi-retirement raising his son Sean. Paul and George were still scoring hits. And Ringo? Ringo was trying to get an acting career going. He had moderate success in films like That'll Be the Day, while the less said about the Son of Dracula or Blindman the better. In 1978, in order to promote his latest album, Bad Boy, he made a TV special for ABC TV called, appropriately enough, 'Ringo' (not to be confused with his former album also named Ringo). It premiered in April, 1978, and featured an all star guest cast. Among those who humiliated themselves to help Ringo were Carrie Fisher, Art Carney, Vincent Price, Angie Dickinson, and John Ritter. Even Beatle George made an appearance. George and his epic perm from the Ringo TV special: The 'plot' featured that hoariest of cliches, a 'prince and the pauper' tale of a switch between Ringo's pop star character and a loser named 'Ognir Rrats'. No points if you figure out where they got that name from. The dual role stretched Ringo's (or is it Ognir's?) acting talents well past the breaking point. Below: the postman does not even ring once for Mr. Rrats. Alas, the show was a bomb, garnering horrible ratings, and the record it was meant to promote did little better. If it weren't for the same year's Star Wars Holiday Special, it might be remembered now as the worst special of the time. Star Wars tops Starr Wars I guess (and how fortunate were Art Carney and Carrie Fisher, who appeared in both specials! At least Fisher had cocaine as an excuse). Here is the special in its glorious entirety. I love Ringo and the Beatles, of course, so consider my providing this link as a little 'tough love' for my favorite drummer. (by the way, things were soon to look up for Ringo. He would within a few years marry super gorgeous ex-Bond Girl Barbara Bach. Not to be confused with Arabrab Hcab, who married Mr. Rrats).
I use the word hate because that is usually how I feel about their songs when they want to “be artists” if they aren’t good at discerning what people are willing to hear. It depends on how out there they get. The true artists are incredible...like a Springsteen for instance, Bonnie Raitt, Dylan (ironic I don’t personally enjoy any of those acts, but I do respect their art and obviously sell a ton of records so I am clearly in the minority). A record executive is probably going to stay out of their way. But case in point, when you have someone like Eric Carmen doing an album like Boats Against The Current (a terrible album imo, and it ended up in every cut out bin across the nation) that he still maintains is a “brilliant” album even though no one else seemed to think so, that’s when someone like Clive needs to step in. His previous album was a big hit. Then he decided to go the “artistic” route and his career never recovered. Same with Melissa Manchester, Jennifer Warnes (though she has certainly retained a niche following within the audiophile community for making superb sounding, artist driven types of albums except she’s generally good at it), and certainly others. I hated Lindsey’s artistic driven Tusk album as a whole, though admittedly plenty liked it (but it too ended up in many out bins). If you get so out there with your ideas in being an artist, people just won’t connect with it. Record company executives have a responsibility to make sure their acts sell albums. Also, using Tusk as an example, you “bait” your fans with a sound (Rumours) and then come out with a followup that is nothing at all like the previous album, and then you wonder why it failed? You can’t do Rumors over again, but many artists have evolved at a pace that fans were fine with. They would come back with a very commercially successful album, but many artists don’t get another chance. So, to answer your question (and you make a good point, obviously)....it depends.
While "Too Much Heaven" was a nice lead up to what we knew was a highly anticipated new Bee Gees record (somehow, the catastrophe of SPLHCB managed to do minimal damage to their reputation in the Midwest), "Tragedy" was the one single release that was pure ear candy and my family could not get enough of it. I distinctly remember the video of Barry recording the explosion...so I immediately took the cue, set up my dad's old Wollansak reel to reel recorder (a T-1580, with its own Shure made high impedance mic), cupped my hands over the mic and proceeded to make explosion sound after explosion sound into the recorder. Hey, I was nine years old! The song is pretty epic, even if the falsettos were now just completely over the top. As a nine year old, I loved it...again, fun to sing along to, but hearing it now, it's a bit much. Seeing the vintage Criteria Sound footage is pretty killer...I'm sure experts around here can identify the gear shown (looks like Dolby A racks, an MCI recorder...not sure of the console). BUT, watching Barry cup a Neumann U67, with no pop filter and making mouth explosions...AHHHHHHH.....please NO!!!! I'm sure they could do whatever they wanted there (if the shrine of Bee Gees gold records on the wall wasn't explicit enough), but that is just a crime. You couldn't have just snagged an SM58 and produced the same result without ruining a killer mic?
Elvis Costello is one of the most diverse and experimental artists of his era, he's done full fledged country, classical and jazz flavored albums and even did an album with a hip hop group when he safely could've copied his first three albums for his entire career and stayed in that lane (Yes I know you meant the other Elvis lol)
Honestly, I respect artists like Lindsey Buckingham (FM), Prince and Springsteen more because they have that massive uber-smash album that really puts them over the top, and yet they follow it with something entirely different that smooths the sales decline because they weren't exactly trying to duplicate the prior smash. Artists with common sense know a Rumours, Purple Rain or Born In The USA only comes along once (one of MJ's downfalls was his blind faith that he could do Thriller again, and again, and again.... then would whine when the album only sold 30 million worldwide instead of 50) so it's smart to deliberately do something you know will challenge listeners and do something different knowing very well the next album wasn't going to sell. Tusk (which fits the conversation since we're in 1979) works for what it was because FM were following up an album that was pretty much played on radio start to finish, so Lindsey getting his DIY on actually was smart because it showed he wasn't going to try and do the same thing again, and I think Stevie's songs on Tusk are actually better than her Rumours classics. In 1982 FM did the more conventional Mirage which did sell more in the US than Tusk and had two big hits you hear much more in 2019 than the Tusk singles, but the album for the most part isn't as remembered as Tusk because it was very by-the-numbers per Mick's insistence that the next album be more Rumours and less Tusk.
Being an artist rather than a pop singer is a lofty goal but trafficking in the type of pop Melissa, Barry, Eric, Dionne, Aretha, Kelly, & P!nk did under Clive’s rule to get onto the radio is like parking your car at a short term meter that requires you to run out every hour and feed it. You can coast for a short time without hits but the second radio decides your done it’s hard to transition to an albums act. Very few ever successfully pull this off. Usually it’s a flop and one more try then if it doesn’t take the act gets dropped. Even if all of the artists I referenced had issues with what was hitting for them they all accepted that they would rather be relevant to a larger audience for as long as possible rather than a niche albums act with a small following. Once most of them course corrected back to accessible pop the hits continued until they aged out at the format. Like Clive or not, he knew what would work with mass audiences which is why he wound up pretty much last man standing from his era of label head titans. He produced hits and had a profitable bottom line - the latter the most important part to maintaining his relevancy and position. I can’t hate Davis for pushing his acts to the center of things to keep their careers going and his own. It’s called the music business for a reason and it will always be hit driven.
well deliberately sabotaging the album of one of your hottest artists to "teach her a lesson" and basically bullying her to be back in check is much different than simply trying to steer an artist into a commercial direction. We'll never know how My December would've performed normally because the label barely promoted the album and the songs had almost no radio airplay thanks to Clive's hissyfit and vendetta. Hard to believe the same guy who signed Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Annie Lennox and Paul Simon is the same guy who did this
Tragedy The worst of Barry Gibb's Top 10 hits easily for me. As much as I thought his falsetto was perfect on the sublime "Too Much Heaven", it's nails on a chalkboard here. And, I've liked it up until now. I just really dislike this song. And I'm a fan of the Bee Gees' "disco" era This was the beginning of the end for the Bee Gees, although Barry Gibb would still have some songwriting/producing success, and the Bee Gees would have one more 'weak compared to what came before' #1.
I think I know how: When he was at Columbia in the 70s he didn't own the company. He could be tossed out by shareholders, and that's what happened. With Arista, he had no bosses.
I like this song, but I don't remember ever hearing it back in the day, unlike Isn't It Time. I also like Isn't It Time better; they are a bit like You've Lost That Loving Feeling/Soul and Inspiration, very similar in style but the older song is more successful IMO.
Stumblin' In always reminds me of Margaritaville; probably that little instrumental bit after 'my love is alive'. I'm a big glam rock fan, but I never got Suzi Quatro. Kick the Can or whatever it's called is one of the most boring glam smashes I can think of. It's kind of cool that there was this one big female glam star who also happened to be American, but I have yet to hear anything from her glam heyday that really grabs me. I do like Stumblin' In, though. Edit: Can the Can, which makes no sense, is the actual title, not Kick the Can.
I'm not sure I get this point. I think Elvis is in some ways a perfect example of an artist who was massively inhibited by his idiot manager, Col Parker, who stuck him in one increasingly stupid movie after another instead of letting him do what he did best. Elvis was too 'aw shucks' to do anything about it and he and his credibility suffered for it until the 1968 'Comeback special' (called that for a reason). Exhibit A:
And let's not forget 'Queenie Waheenie's Papaya" I realize it was just a cutesy-wutesy movie track but really?
I'm not going to compare Eric Carmen with Bob Dylan for obvious reasons, but it kind of sounds like you're saying that certain people get to be considered artists and others don't, and it's based on financial success? Always remember that Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime (and no, I'm not comparing Eric Carmen to him, either, but you get my point!). Was van Gogh a failure or a genius? Answer: he was both, but few saw him as a genius until decades later. Which means, let Carmen do what he wants, he's the artist. If he ends up not getting a renewed record deal, well, that was his choice. I don't get to tell him that he must do variations on 'Go All the Way' every time he records until he's 80. And that probably wouldn't work, anyways. But I also don't have to buy his crappy solo project if I don't like it. McCartney said in a Mojo I recently read that literally every step of the way, the Beatles were second guessed by someone. 'Cut your hair'; 'don't sing yeah yeah yeah'; 'record a professional songwriter's song'; 'brown paper bags for Sgt. Pepper' (Brian Epstein's actual quote, because he worried about the legal issues of the album cover); 'they look old' (actual reaction of teenager on American Bandstand to seeing the Strawberry Fields Forever video for the first time); 'don't compare your fame to Jesus' (OK, they might have been right about that one). I'm so glad the Fabs kept taking those chances, even if it did lead to the Magical Mystery Tour film, because it also led to Strawberry Fields and Eleanor Rigby.
