Miss Piggy Lunchbox

Stevie Nicks sounds like her hair. It’s huge, bold, strong, and entirely representative of the 80’s.

I’m going to allow myself to put about as much effort into the review of greatest hits albums as the artist and record company put into making it. Since they generally lack an overall theme, I think it’s entirely appropriate for me to tick off the songs one by one with flip comments.

01 “Sometimes It’s A Bitch” – “Sometimes love’s blind, sometimes it sees/Sometimes it’s roses, sometimes it’s wheat.” Well, it’s at least in a rare group of rock songs that use the word “wheat.” This idea of putting a couple of new songs on a greatest hits album is almost always disastrous because, while it may be an excuse to get a bit more radio airplay to push the album along, the songs almost always suck (and, really, how can they even be called a greatest hit?) and force your fan base that already has your entire collection to feel forced to buy another $16 CD. Boy, I wonder why people like file sharing. One of Jon Bon Jovi’s worst songs. Oh, and is that the opening rhythm part from Nicks’ biggest hit, “Edge of Seventeen?” Why, in fact it is.

02 “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” – One of the CD’s best tracks. Written by and featuring Tom Petty. ‘Nuff said.

03 “Whole Lotta Trouble” – Proof that, yes, the blues can be made more white and more big hair than even what Cinderella was able to accomplish.

04 “Talk To Me” – Standard 80’s hugeness in the keys and drums. Reeks of the stereotype that a female vocalist has to write a song about verbal communication because that’s what women like.

05 “Stand Back” – The first video I ever remember seeing on MTV and a damn fine song. I absolutely adore the machine gun keyboard line.

06 “Beauty And The Beast” – Bad but harmless. The guiltiest of pleasures.

07 “If Anyone Falls” – Stevie Nicks in the best light is a guilty pleasure, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. This is pure Nicks. It all comes together. I rock out to this when you’re not watching but change the radio station if you’re in the car.

08 “Room’s On Fire” – Probably the best song here, though the lyrics could have used some work. “Well there is magic all around you/If I do say so myself” works because it’s the perfect number of syllables with the perfect levels of accents to fit the melody, but it really doesn’t work as a lyrical idea unless you’re affecting a character with a particular personality, which is not happening in this simple love song.

09 “Love’s A Hard Game To Play” – A few years ago My Baby overheard her teenage sister singing a gut-wrenching rendition of Jewel’s “Foolish Games” from her bedroom, and that reminded her of when she used to bare her soul to her radio playing “The Flame” when she was a teenage girl. This song is firmly in that genre and seems particularly aimed at shy Plain Janes: “Wake up my sweet child/There’s something I got to say to you tonite [sic]/It’s time you took a look inside/’Cuz there’s so much more to me than meets the eye/…/The harder the look the more you’ll find/It’s never easy no matter what they say.”

10 “Edge Of Seventeen” – Probably Nicks’ biggest hit. You know it as the “white-winged dove” song. You know…”Just like the white-winged dove/Sings a song/Sounds like she’s singing/Whoo whoo whoo.” I can hardly understand any of the lyrics. Enunciate, Stevie, enunciate. Not my favorite, but that intro is awesome and carries the tune.

11 “Leather And Lace” – I like it. Don Henley does a verse.

12 “I Can’t Wait” – Reeks of 1985. This is the worst of mid-80’s pop, only with an oomph-ier guitar part. Didn’t Michael Jackson try something like that on Bad, which was, what, 1987? This was probably written in a factory from a 1985 recipe book.

13 “Has Anyone Written Anything For You” – Awful. Pure tripe.

14 “Desert Angel” – The worst of all the songs and further proof that you shouldn’t write new songs for greatest hits albums. You also shouldn’t write songs with Bret Michaels. Written about the Gulf War. Saturday Night Live couldn’t write better parody lyrics:

I was born in the desert
So I know how it feels there
…
Well this is the first thing
That I’ve written
Since I wrote about freedom
And then the wall came down
Well we thought it was a great beginning
People were free to cross the line
But then something heppened in the desert
Something broke the stars into pieces

Those are lyrics. Seriously.

Rating:
Mix CD Candidates: I don’t put my guilty pleasures on mix CDs.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 10th, 2005 at 11:09 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.