Here in Wisconsin, we have a sort of love/hate thing about winter. Back in college, I remember walking to work in bitter cold, with icicles forming in my facial hair and the inner workings of my Walkman freezing to a crawl so that my mix tape sounded like a 45 played at 33. Those mornings are too sad to contemplate further, but as miserable as I was, it also gave me an opportunity to feel all stoic and rugged and butch. For us Midwesterners, the quiet endurance of an extreme winter season is both a burden and a source of pride. Suffice to say that even as May heads into June, there have been frost advisories in America’s Dairyland. Wednesday night, I mowed my lawn in a winter coat. So when they start opening the garden centers at the Home Depots and Shopkos and Wal-Marts, we flock to them like mosquitoes to bug zappers, ravenous for the color green – ravenous for color at all.
Of course, it could be worse. We could be in Norway. (Actually, many of us are Norwegian.) And the Norwegian trio a-ha captured the poetically fleeting nature of a northern summer gloriously in the video for their 2000 reunion single “Summer Moved On” (which they debuted at the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize Concert). The band will always be best known for their 1985 hit “Take On Me” (and its video), but, even though it wasn’t a hit on these shores, “Summer Moved On” successfully re-established the band as an international pop force, and may, in fact, prove to be just as enduring and classic as their first hit. Both lyrically and musically the opposite of their signature hit, “Summer Moved On” is a languorous contemplation of a relationship’s final days which culminates with cascading strings and Morten Harket’s dramatic falsetto plea to “Stay… don’t just walk away” – how does that man hold his notes? – the song is accompanied by a video depicting a rocky ocean beach strewn with light-starved people waiting for the dawn of what proves to be an excruciatingly brief day.
Since their reunion, and in between the members’ various side projects – primary songwriter Pal Waaktaar and his wife Lauren Savoy record together under the name Savoy and in 2004 Magne “Mags” Furuholmen recorded a solo album with members of Coldplay – a-ha have released four very good albums (available in the U.S. only as imports) including the double-live set How Can I Sleep With Your Voice In My Head, with a new as-yet-untitled record scheduled to come out this fall. In the meantime, Morten Harket has revived his solo career with a brand new studio album called Letter From Egypt, his first full-length, English-language studio album since 1995’s lovely Wild Seed. The album’s advance single is a typically sweeping ballad called “Movies” (a cover of fellow Norskies the Locomotives’ “My Woman”) which was a top 10 hit in Norway earlier this year. Check out Morten (as hunky as ever) performing the song at last year’s Nobel Peace Prize Concert to an audience which included Al Gore. The album’s second single, the slightly more upbeat and far less engrossing “Darkside” was released in Europe in May.
It seems like this week has been “Usher week” on our blog. But really, why not? Usher is a star and these days, there are so many fly by night artists that we should celebrate the artists that continually fill the appetites of their fan bases. Though Usher’s first CD (way back in 1994) didn’t really make an impact, his second did in a big way, thanks to this single, You Make Me Wanna. I actually remember going to a record store with my then girlfriend and buying the single because she was so crazy for it. How many times do you remember buying a certain song or album? That’s the impact this one made.
– How much money do you want to bet that dude isn’t playing one lick of that guitar?
– Is he wearing the Jordan XIs?
– This song made every guy question any male friends their girlfriends had. It was like, “You like this song, ok, you can’t have anymore guy friends.”
– What do the fish in the aquarium have to do with this song?
– Ha! If you squint a little, I think you can see Jermaine Dupri.
– Based off this video, you can tell dude has some dance skills, but I didn’t think he’d be the closest thing to MJ that he became. Wait, I think Chris Brown might’ve taken the closest thing to MJ on the dance floor mantle.
– Why did they all take off their shoes? Was it to tell us that they were dancing with their laces untied?
– What kind of speed bag dancing was Jermaine Dupri doing at the end of this video?
The man is still singing and dancing 11 years later. And he probably won’t be stopping anytime soon.
…and here I sit, with absolutely no idea how to start this review. Well, we can skip the potentially boring and long-winded intro and say you’d have to have been living under a rock for the past decade or so to not know who Usher Raymond is. Starting out at the tail end of the teen-R&B wave that gave us Brandy, Monica and Tevin Campbell, Usher didn’t really stand out from the pack personality-wise, but boy, did he know how to make the hits. A first album back in ’94 was a relative dud, but 1997’s My Way and 2001’s 8701 sold like hotcakes and established the handsome and talented young man as the prince of R&B. He was charismatic and fresh-scrubbed enough to appeal to soccer moms while still maintaining something of an edge to satisfy the young girls’ bad boy fantasies.
Usher hit the motherlode with 2004’s Confessions. That album blew up like a neutron bomb and unquestionably made Usher the King of Pop. A breakup with TLC’s Chilli and rumors of infidelity dirtied up his image enough for him to shake the teen-star image, and 4 #1 singles and 10 million U.S. sales later, Usher found himself standing atop a crowded field of imitators…or at least leading the current pack of Michael Jackson tribute acts that includes Justin Timberlake (Usher’s chief rival, even if he’s sold half the records), Chris Brown, Ne-Yo, Trey Songz and the list goes on and on…
Four years is a long time, and in 2008, Usher is now officially a grown man on the cusp of 30. He’s also a married dad who lost his own father at the beginning of this year. Great artists make music that reflects where they are in their lives at the present time, and while I’ll stop short of calling Usher a great artist, it’s safe to say that Here I Stand, the singer’s fifth studio album, is an accurate representation of the singer’s life. There’s a lot to be said for the concept album, and Stand’s tracks suggest a loose narrative-following the life of a guy who decides to hang up his player card and reprioritize. There’s a more mature edge to the lyrics as well as a newfound confidence in Usher’s singing. He’s a very good vocalist, with a full, expressive voice- a solid B if you’d consider someone like Anthony Hamilton as an A+ in today’s crop of soul singers. The production stops just short of being overtly trendy, although it certainly fits in with the synth-heavy, almost retro-80s sound that’s permeating current R&B right now. Actually, one thing that’s notable about this album is that it sounds fairly cohesive despite being overseen by a literal laundry list of producers.
That said, I feel like something is missing here, and I’m not sure what it is. The album definitely runs a little long-with 15 full tracks, 2 interludes and a bonus cut, it could easily have been trimmed by 3 or 4 songs and still be as good. I also wonder if I’m just a victim of heightened expectations and media spin. Confessions was a solid album, but I’d have trouble calling it a classic. When you really break it down, Here I Stand is maybe a percentage point or two lower in quality, but it’s still as solid as modern R&B gets.
I’ve heard folks giving this album crap for being ballad-heavy, but um…have you listened to Usher’s last two albums? Usher’s work is easily 2-1 in favor of midtempo and slow jams. That said, he delivers on a couple of uptempo cuts. It took me a couple of listens to get into This Ain’t Sex, especially after an underwhelming “SNL” performance of it a couple weeks back, but despite the eye-rolling lyrics (“this ain’t sex/we’re making moments that will outlast the world”), it’s a fun track with a bubbly, early Eighties vibe that might remind some (like my boy GG) of Michael Jackson. Personally, at this point I think Ush owes MJ some money, but that’s for another review.
Something Special is a bit more on the laid-back tip, almost bluesy sounding (one of the few tracks where a guitar and not a synthesizer is the prominent instrument), but it’s the song on the album that best spotlights Usher’s voice and makes you appreciate him as a vocalist. Trading Places finds Usher indulging in his inner freak, asking his lover to be the aggressor in their relationship. I’m not sure that I want the image of Usher throwing out the trash wearing just his girlfriend’s tee-shirt in my head, but it’s definitely an interesting lyric and an engaging song. Musically, there’s a definite Prince influence (down to the electric guitar solo), but I also get sort of an R. Kelly vibe-without the disgusting Child Molester Pee on You glow that Kelly has.
One thing Usher definitely needs to stop doing ASAP is collaborating with rappers, as the guest appearances here range from unnecessary to awful. Young Jeezy is fairly easy to ignore on the hit single Love in This Club and Jay-Z on autopilot is still the best thing (ha!) on the boring midtempo track Best Thing. Unfortunately, we also have to deal with will.i.am completely derailing What’s Your Name (which features an itchy synth line reminiscent of Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This”) with a verse that’s borderline gibberish. Fergie’s rapping on “My Humps” sounds like Rakim compared to will.i.am’s emceeing on this track. Still, that’s not worse than Lil’ Wayne’s guest verse on Love in This Club Part II. On this track, which features a fairly beige co-lead vocal by Beyonce, Wayne literally wheezes his rhyme-he sounds like someone who’s just been stabbed in the chest and is gasping for breath. Furthermore, he has the unmitigated gall to rip off a portion of Janet Jackson’s “Anytime, Anyplace” for almost half of his rhyme. I hope Janet corners him in a back alley and stabs him in the eye with her nipple shield.
However, there is no T-Pain on this album. For that, we must rejoice.
This album has a decidedly dramatic production sheen. Many of the more personal songs have the build and swell of a movie, one of many reasons I find this album very similar to Mary J. Blige’s current “Growing Pains”. The buzzing synths on Moving Mountains serve to reinforce Usher’s plaintive vocal about a relationship in which he just can’t seem to win. The piano/strings-enhanced His Mistakes is another winner, as is Before I Met You. Even if the songwriting is pedestrian, Usher sings with an honesty and force that sells even the most average lyric.
So, here I sit (well, here I lay at this point…yes, I’m lazy) trying to figure how to accurately summarize this album. By no means is Here I Stand a bad album. There are certainly more memorable parts than there are reasons to hit the “skip” button on your audio player of choice. However, I think I tore off the wrapping on this CD expecting a classic and have come away ever so slightly disappointed. It’s certainly one of the better R&B albums to come out in the first part of 2008, but despite his personal growth, I’m still waiting for Usher to get to the next level musically. What life-changing event will it take to get him there?
