| Sheryl Crow. The Very Best Of (A&M/Universal)
Today it’s strange to remember that Sheryl Crow started out as a guitarist (!) for Michael Jackson. I performed with the “king” for two whole years, by the way. But as a solo performer she became famous in the field of other music: folk rock, “Americana”. This album is the first collection of the best songs of Cheryl, who burst into the pop world in the early 90s with the hit All I Wanna Do. Collections, of course, have an obvious goal: to collect more hits, at a cheaper price, and sell this thing again. And there is a non-obvious one - for example, the publication of some interesting b-sides that were released on singles a long time ago and will now disappear (or become a philophonic rarity, which is the same thing for the general public). True, I don’t know how good the b-sides of Cheryl’s singles were (maybe they were frankly passable things), but she definitely had interesting non-album things. For example, songs from soundtracks, like the cover of Sweet Child O'Mine from the Adam Sandler movie Big Daddy. It is not on the collection, but another film hit is present - Leaving Las Vegas (from “Leaving Las Vegas”). Among the new things is a duet with the charlatan pseudo-rapper Kid Rock, as well as a nice little thing called Light In Your Eyes, the slide guitar in which is somehow very clearly inspired by George Harrison's My Sweet Lord. In general, the collection is like a collection, “protocol”. Everything is even arranged chronologically.
Air. Talkie Walkie (Source/Virgin France)
French electronic musicians with a conservatory education and a love for old melodic music of the 60s - the Air duo - on the new album moved away from dubious experiments and recorded what they do best. On the album Talkie Walkie (the title is a shoutout to Serge Gainsbourg) there is no harshness, like on 1000 Hz, and no melodic declamations of the Italian poet Alessandro Barco. The album begins with a minimalist, if not monotonous, melody (Venus), but continues with a real hit - Cherry Blossom Girl. And then the same Air that you knew in the mid-90s: a transparent sound, a leisurely beat, thoughtful and dreamy melodies played on analog synthesizers, and even a silly artistic whistle (Alpha Beta Gaga). The only experiment - the guys started singing. In fact, with the success of Air, there was a slight boom in certain genres in the world in which the French were considered to excel best. The term French touch appeared (as meaningless as, for example, “Britpop”). But although the term does not give any idea of the form and genre, it quite accurately reflects the emotional state. Basically, the term French touch refers to a beautiful and “tasty” mixture of electronics, live instruments, sentimental melodies and a special “French intonation” in the voice. And all this, of course, is on the new album Air. Everything these guys are so famous for.
Michael Learns To Rock. Michael Learns To Rock (Medley Records Denmark/EMI)
The new album of the Danish band Michael Learns To Rock has no title. Or, one might say, it bears an eponymous name, i.e. the same as the group - “Michael Learns to Fly” (what is it about?). Eponymous names are typical for debuts or for albums on which the group dramatically changes its style. Or, let’s say, a group released several albums in their homeland, and the next one – all over the world. None of the above options suits the group Michael Learns To Rock - and this is not their first album, and the previous ones were published in different countries (in Russia and especially actively in Southeast Asia), and not just in the Danish kingdom. In the new album, the band makes a big gift to their Eastern fans by covering in English a popular Chinese song by a certain author named Jackie Jang (the song Take Me To Your Heart). Otherwise, no change in style. All the same eighties soft rock, guitar “pop for adults”. Guitars, keyboards, high male vocals, an abundance of all kinds of heart-mind-feeling in the lyrics. The canons of the genre are perfectly observed: everything is very convincing, very correct, very “American”. The album's most hit and listenable track, Hit By A Feeling, is reminiscent of Maggie Reilly's Everytime We Touch, and another successful number, Salvation, also reminds something of Boney Tyler's Holding Out For A Hero. By the way, it is precisely the composition that disrupts this whole celebration of secondaryness and predictability, but only because Salvation is literally a spoiled track. Somehow a piece of another musical fragment and even the creak of a film being rewound crept into it. But this “involuntary sample”, a marriage in the technical sense, feels much more alive than the entire album. Alexander BELYAEV
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