If the cover of Stardust: The Great American Songbook, Vol. 3 is any indication, Rod Stewart is getting a little tired of the classy act he's put on over the last two years, as a crooner of pop standards. Gone are the straightforward portrait shots, and in their place is a jokey picture of Rod with a pair of hot legs. It unwittingly looks like a ...
Rhino's 2001 collection The Very Best of Rod Stewart aims to be comprehensive. Rhino has open access to the Warner vaults, and Stewart had many, many hits for the label -- nearly two decades' worth, in fact. During those two decades, he was pursuing the shifting tides of pop fashion, delving into disco, new wave, adult contemporary ballads, and ...
Early on in his career Rod Stewart established himself as one of rock's great interpretive vocalists, which made the flatness of his Great American Songbook series a bit puzzling. If any classic rock veteran of the '60s should have been able to offer new spins on old standards, it should have been Rod the Mod, who was turning Elvis' "All Shook ...
A month after Rod Stewart's fourth volume of his ongoing (some might say never-ending) Great American Songbook series was released, all four of the albums were rounded up in a cardboard box and released as The Great American Songbook. Apart from a biographical essay from Alan Light and a couple of photographs, there is no new material here -- even ...
Without greatly altering his approach, Rod Stewart perfected his blend of hard rock, folk, and blues on his masterpiece, Every Picture Tells a Story. Marginally a harder-rocking album than Gasoline Alley -- the Faces blister on the Temptations cover "(I Know I'm) Losing You," and the acoustic title track goes into hyper-drive with Mick Waller's ...
Since there was a Pure Funk and Pure Disco, it makes sense that a Pure '70s would follow. It couldn't be called "Pure Rock," since a lot of this simply doesn't rock at all -- "American Pie," anyone? However, all 20 songs on this collection (mostly culled from the Polygram vaults) reek of the '70s, and that's why this is a fun listen. Yes, it's ...
Two Rooms is a wildly uneven star-studded tribute to a wildly uneven superstar songwriting team. Though Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote many of the best pop songs of the '70s and '80s, they have written more than their fair share of clunkers as well. Some of them were chosen for this collection. Tina Turner, for example, tackles the ludicrously ...
A two-disc grab-bag compilation spanning several decades and genres, Hip-O's Love Songs: Gold fares well for a release that's so broad and seemingly random. It's certain that no one could possibly have a strong stomach for all 40 of the selections (let alone any given 30), and there are some very polarizing hits here, where fans and haters feel ...
Eric Clapton's Unplugged turned the MTV series into a pop culture phenomenon, one that was especially appealing to veteran rockers because all they had to do was dust off their old hits and give them a nice, relaxed reading -- the perfect re-imagining for middle-aged rock stars. Rod Stewart leaped at the opportunity and, in many ways, he seemed ...
For anyone who grew up during the last days of AM radio, anyone who remembers gas shortages, disco scarves, and feathered hair, this mammoth seven-disc box set, Have a Nice Decade: The 70s Pop Culture Box, will be a holy grail of nostalgia. First of all, the discs themselves contain a staggering 164 tracks. Basically, if you remember the song, it ...
The irony of calling this two-disc Rod Stewart collection The Story So Far is that it only tells part of the story, and leaves off the one song, 1971's magnificent "Every Picture Tells a Story" from the album of the same name, that would have given this anthology's title some real credence. Oh, "Maggie Mae" is here, as it should be, but the ...
Downtown Train is a 12-track distillation of Rod Stewart's four-disc box set Storyteller, but instead of containing early hits, it concentrates on '80s singles like "Passion," "Young Turks," "Infatuation," "People Get Ready," and "Forever Young," adding a few '70s songs ("Stay with Me," "Tonight's the Night," "Killing of Georgie," "I Don't Want to ...
Essentially a harder-rocking reprise of Every Picture Tells a Story, Never a Dull Moment never quite reaches the heights of its predecessor, but it's a wonderful, multi-faceted record in its own right. Opening with the touching, autobiographical rocker "True Blue," which finds Rod Stewart trying to come to grips with his newfound stardom but ...
Even though it has a couple of flaws -- particularly the appearance of "Maggie May," which doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the material -- Greatest Hits is an enjoyable sampler of Rod Stewart's first four Warner albums, including most of the hits but not necessarily all of his greatest performances. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
In some ways, it's easy to think of A Night on the Town, Rod Stewart's second album for Warner, as a reprisal of the first, cut with many of the same musicians as Atlantic Crossing, produced once again by Tom Dowd, and even following its predecessor's conceit of having a "Slow Side" and "Fast Side" (granted, this flips the two around, opening with ...
A fabulous assortment of artists from different areas of the rock genre give a glorifying tribute to Curtis Mayfield in a sparkling 17-song package. Stevie Winwood does a partying rendition of "It's All Right"; a version of "Let's Do It Again" is performed by Mayfield and the Repercussions that mimics the Staple Singers' original; Mayfield does ...
Gasoline Alley follows the same formula of Rod Stewart's first album, intercutting contemporary covers with slightly older rock & roll and folk classics and originals written in the same vein. The difference is in execution. Stewart sounds more confident, claiming Elton John's "Country Comfort," the Small Faces' "My Way of Giving," and the Rolling ...
Rod Stewart's sixth album was called Atlantic Crossing because the singer was literally crossing the Atlantic, making America his new home for reasons of the heart (he was fully enamored with actress Britt Ekland at the time) and the wallet (he was eager to escape Britain's restrictive tax rates). As it happens, 1975 was a perfect time for a new ...
Carole King's 1971 album Tapestry was one of the best-selling LPs of the early '70s and has had a lasting influence on pop singer/songwriters ever since. The idea of this tribute album was to re-create the album track-for-track using other artists. Since King had begun her career as a songwriter, with songs such as "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" and ...
David Letterman's The Late Show always had a long tradition of excellent musical performances -- indeed, it's one of the few places on American network television where live music thrives -- so the question that surrounds the 1997 release of Live on Letterman: Music from the Late Show isn't why, but why did it take so long? There have been enough ...
Rod Stewart's retained his classic formula for his fifth solo album, Smiler. Although predictable, the album includes "Sweet Little Rock 'n' Roller" and a reworking of "(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Man," plus a freewheeling take on Elton John's "Let Me Be Your Car" and an inspired version of Dylan's "Girl from the North Country." ~ Stephen ...
The Faces' third album, A Nod Is as Good as a Wink...to a Blind Horse, finally gave the group their long-awaited hit single in "Stay with Me," helping send the album into the Billboard Top Ten, which is certainly a testament to both the song and the album, but it's hard to separate its success from that of Rod Stewart's sudden solo stardom. In the ...
On his debut album (titled An Old Raincoat Won't Ever Let You Down in Britain, and The Rod Stewart Album in America, presumably because its original title was "too English" or cryptic for U.S. audiences), Rod Stewart essays a startlingly original blend of folk, blues, and rock & roll. The opening cover of the Stones' "Street Fighting Man" ...
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