Month: January 2020

#47: Tina Turner, ‘Private Dancer’ (1984) vs. Portishead, ‘Dummy’ (1994)

~ VanJam 80s v. 90s Music War - 50 Album Battles to See Which Decade Rules! ~ 2 Comments

 

Private Dancer is a really solid album. A great listen all the way through.  It’s quintessential 80s soul, full of well crafted synthy-soul-rock originals like super hits “Private Dancer”, “You Better Be Good to Me”, and “What’s Love Got to Do With It”. Injected in the mix are great covers like “I Can’t Stand the Rain”, “Let’s Stay Together”, and the stand out slow burning version of “Help!” (a wonderful surprise to this unlearned Tina listener).  Perhaps the only slight misstep is “1984”.  A dystopian nightmare that sounds like it should be on Broadway. It’s a bananas way to end an album, but I have to acknowledge its unabashed enthusiasm.  “Who could ask for more?”

Dummy has got a lot of that halloweeny sound you hear on a lot of 90s hip hop (e.g. Snoop’s Doggy Style). The foundation of the album is a deep scary groove that gets my body moving, but I remain a little distant just to protect myself from what feels like an impending doom. Wanting only to observe the super cool world of Portishead and not live in it.  Songs like “Sour Times”, “Wandering Star”, and “Numb” have got a soulful driving trip-hop vibe that is easy to latch onto. The last song on Dummy, “Glory Box”, is an alt-rock stand out.  It’s a killer.  However, songs, like “Roads” are just a little to dreary for me.

Both voices are powerful and work perfectly for their backing music. Tina’s is well seasoned and confident, Beth Gibbons of Portishead is understated occasionally exploding with well timed moments of power.  Private Dancer and Dummy are well deserved titans of their decade.  Overall, I am gonna give this one to Tina’s Private Dancer because it just hits that generational sweet spot a little better than Dummy.

JS

WINNER: Tina Turner, Private Dancer (1 point)

RUNNING TALLY:

80s: 3

90s: 1

EARNED POINTS
80s: 3
90s: 1

Next week’s battle  –   #46: Peter Gabriel, Peter Gabriel (1980) vs. Jay-Z, Volume 2…Hard Knock Life (1998)

#48: XTC, ‘Skylarking’ (1986) vs. Weezer, ‘Pinkerton’ (1996)

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What a match-up – the sound of your favourite summer day vs. the sound of a rock star coming unhinged.

Apparently, XTC leader Andy Partridge had been listening to a lot of Beach Boys as they geared up to make their ninth album, and you can tell. Full of birdsong and summer breezes, the album soars with gorgeous melodies and harmonizing. But don’t let the prettiness fool you – the album has some sharp lyrics and hits on some big issues, like mortality (“Dying”) and the plight of the working class (“Earn Enough for Us”). It’s a beauty and it gets richer with every listen (I’m proof – I didn’t like it the first time I heard it upon its release).

Weezer’s Pinkerton, their second album, sees bandleader Rivers Cuomo showing a seriously dark and creepy side of himself, such as “sniffing and licking” an envelope from an 18-year-old Japanese fan while admitting “I wonder how you touch yourself” on “Across the Sea”. Ew. Pinkerton is loud, aggressive, surprising…and brave as hell in its candour. It also nearly destroyed the band because fans initially HATED it after the comparative breeziness of their classic debut. Even Rivers was embarrassed. Then, as reported in this great Rolling Stone article, something funny happened over the ensuing years and it slowly earned its deserved reputation as a stone-cold classic.

Both albums are brilliant, get better with age, and are required additions to any serious music collection. Listen to Pinkerton when you want to unleash some aggression, listen to Skylarking when you’re feeling wistful and nostalgic.

So who wins?

Skylarking. It has more to offer sonically,  plus it contains “Dear God”, in which Partridge writes a letter to God that asks the Almighty why he has abandoned his creation and declares “I can’t believe in you” – a perfect atheist manifesto 20 years before it was fashionable to do such things.

JG

WINNER: XTC, Skylarking (1 point)

BATTLE TALLY

80s: 2

90s: 1

EARNED POINTS
80s: 2
90s: 1

Next week’s battle  –  #47: Tina Turner, Private Dancer (1984) vs. Portishead, Dummy (1994)

#49: The Feelies, ‘Crazy Rhythms’ (1980) vs. Sleater-Kinney, ‘Call the Doctor’ (1996)

~ VanJam 80s v. 90s Music War - 50 Album Battles to See Which Decade Rules! ~ 2 Comments

 

Interesting match up. The indie boys of light eighties punk versus the indie girls of heavy nineties punk.  Different in some ways, but they are both in the same family. The Feelies being the brothers to the Sleater-Kinney sisters. The former ruling the teenage roost with a subdued confidence and the latter raising hell with a brash insecurity.

Its hard to select a clear winner here.  There isn’t much difference between them.  Both albums contain extremely catchy and very rhythmic songs filled with bursts of high spirited nervous energy.  Crazy Rhythms’ zero-distortion-two-chord-rifforama is clean and very pleasing to the ears. However, it is unassuming, filled with space and at risk of getting lost in the background. Call the Doctor’s all-distortion-three-chord-rifforama is completely in your face and requires full attention be paid to it.  But that is just attitude.  Change the dynamics of a strikingly wonderful song like “I’m Not Waiting” from Call the Doctor and it can seamlessly sit as a track on Crazy Rhythms.

Despite their seminal stature both of these albums are new discoveries for me.  From what I can gather, they equal in their impact and influence on the indie rock sound, so I can’t differentiate them that way.  So essentially it comes down to the MEAT of both albums and I have to say that there is more to chew on in Call the Doctor.  Ultimately there are more riffs, more rhythms, and more progressions.  Even though Crazy Rhythms’ minimalism is a punk rock triumph, Call the Doctor’s maximalist punk sound wins by a chord.

JS

WINNER: Sleater-Kinney, Call the Doctor (1 point)

BATTLE TALLY

80s: 1

90s: 1

EARNED POINTS
80s: 1
90s: 1

Next week’s battle  –  #48: XTC, Skylarking (1986) vs. Weezer, Pinkerton (1996)

#50: Madonna, ‘Madonna’ (1983) vs. 2Pac, ‘All Eyez on Me’ (1996)

~ VanJam 80s v. 90s Music War - 50 Album Battles to See Which Decade Rules! ~ 2 Comments

 

Right out of the gate we see why this blog is a good idea – where else can you pit synthesized girly pop against bad ass gangsta rap? This is all the more interesting considering these two secretly dated for a while, and it led to a wacky appearance by Madonna on David Letterman (Tupac would later apologize in a very expensive letter, apparently).

tupac-madonna[1]

Anyway…Madonna’s first album holds up a lot better than expected. With infectious songs like “Lucky Star”, “Borderline” and “Holiday”, the pop star burst upon the music scene fully formed, knowing what she wanted to do and how she was going to do it. The world didn’t know she was going to change pop music, but she did.

But does it have the gravitas to topple Tupac’s post-prison magnum opus? Actually, yes. All Eyez on Me has lots of great stuff and is overflowing with ambition and hefty themes, but it is far from perfect – it’s hard to make a 2+ hour album without filler. It was a grand statement from a guy who continues to have influence over his genre (To whit: The world’s current greatest rapper, Kendrick Lamar, closed his masterpiece To Pimp a Butterfly with a fascinating imagined conversation with 2Pac). But it’s a lot of work to sit through.

And, he was just one of several legends of 90s gangsta rap. Madonna, on the other hand, is one of a kind — the archetype for every pop princess who would follow, from Britney Spears to Rihanna to Katy Perry to Keisha (why am I naming some of them – it applies to all of them). She would have even better albums still to come, and not just in the 80s, but it all started with this one.

JG

WINNER: Madonna, Madonna (1 point)

BATTLE TALLY

80s: 1

90s: 0

EARNED POINTS
80s: 1
90s: 0

Next week’s battle  –  #49: The Feelies, Crazy Rhythms (1980) vs. Sleater-Kinney, Call the Doctor (1996)