There’s been a huge wave of UK artists crossing over to American success lately. Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Estelle and Adele have all had a degree of success on these shores, although not commensurate with their overwhelming success in their homeland. A British artist that I’ve been enamored with for quite some time is Mike Skinner AKA The Streets. For lack of a better description, Skinner’s a rap artist. However, unlike most British emcees, who seem to be trying their best to sound American, Skinner’s music is decidedly British…and even if he were to try to Americanize his sound, there’s no way in hell he’d be able to cross over with that impenetrable accent. Nevertheless, Skinner’s built up a cult following over the course of four albums-each of which has something worth recommending on it.
Over time, Skinner has also adjusted his world view. While his first album, Original Pirate Material,was the story of an everyday guy going through everyday paces, his second album, A Grand Don’t Come for Free, was the story of a kid who suddenly made something of himself and wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. Third album The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living pointed out some of the vapidity of celebrity (while simultaneously revelling in it), while Skinner’s fourth effort, Everything is Borrowed, presents a mature man, looking at the world in front of him and trying to make sense of it. This maturation from album to album has been extremely rewarding, and Borrowed turns out to be yet another fine effort from Skinner.
It’s amazing how the critical knives that were used to attack the shit out of New Kids on the Block back in their heyday have softened-considerably. Whereas most pop publications at the time were busy metaphorically running over Joe, Jon, Danny, Donnie and Jordan with an 18-wheeler, their comeback this year has been greeted mostly by either silence or warm nostalgia. If you read this site, you’re well aware that I’m a fan, even though in retrospect, the albums (not counting 1994’s “Face the Music”, which will be featured in this column sooner or later) are merely average.
Which is why the fact that Jordan Knight’s 1999 debut solo album is so good initially startled me. I mean, I always thought he could sing a little somethin’…actually, he was the only member of the group that had truly impressive pipes. However, if you can get over the stigma of Mr. “You Got The Right Stuff, bay-bay” singing, you may wind up liking Jordan Knight a helluva lot more than you think you should.
Jordan linked up with two VIP-types who turned out to be great creative partners for his solo debut. First, he hooked up with a then-unknown Robin Thicke. While we know Thicke now as the musical equivalent of White Chocolate, he was then only barely known as a songwriter. Thicke and Jordan proved to be a solid combo, writing and producing much of Jordan Knight.
I was elated. I was depressed and confused. I got the heebie-jeebies. But mostly, I was just elated. And depressed and confused. I mean, how often is it, these days, that we hear Godley & Creme’s magnificent 1985 single “Cry” on the radio? And then to hear it in a commercial? And not just any commercial, but a commercial for, of all things, Grand Theft Auto IV. Seriously? WTF? “Cry” is without question one of the strangest, most beautiful and memorable songs to hit the American Top 40 in the 80s, a watery, undulating gem in which a man declares with naked vulnerability his partner’s utter lack of empathy – the singer echoes the trembly, lower-register guitar melody over chugging, migraine-throbbing bass-lines, rippling synthesizers and atmospheric vocal effects: You don’t know how to play the game and you cheat – you lie – you make me wanna cry.
This sort of artsy vulnerability is not the usual stuff of shoot-em-up video game soundtracks, and that may, in fact, be why it works so well in this commercial (I wonder if it’s used in the game itself as well? – is there anyone who actually plays video games who might enlighten me?). When set against the ad’s violent backdrop of urban decay, the song’s moodiness and emphatic lack of macho do much to heighten the game’s image as something more than just a cheap, macho thrill-ride. It gives the images on the screen a surprising (but intuitively understandable) undertow of despair – the kind of aura we’d sooner expect from an HBO drama than a video game franchise.
I admit, I’m no gamer – unless we’re talking about Pitfall or Qbert – but I have absorbed through some kind of media osmosis that since its debut, the Grand Theft Auto series has had the sort of genre-elevating (and even medium-elevating) effect on “shooter” video games that The Sopranos had on mob dramas (and TV dramas in general). The use of “Cry” in this ad alone seems – at least to this admittedly uninformed observer – to confirm such assertions. It’s a bewildering choice, and I wonder just how many people who really are into Grand Theft Auto have ever heard the song before – and if they’re hearing it for the first time in the context of this game, what do they think? (Anyone out there care to comment?)
Whatever gamers think of “Cry”, I can’t help but think the men who created it, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, are loving circumstances of the song’s rediscovery. Throughout the 70s, they were members of the British group 10cc, one of the wittiest, most sonically varied and experimental art rock conglomerates of the decade, responsible for the iconic six-minute MOR epic “I’m Not In Love”. By the late 70s, Godley & Creme splintered off to record their own projects, debuting as a duo with the gargantuan concept album Consequences, an indulgent environmental revenge fantasy built around the sound of a synthesizer they invented called the Gizmo.
Though Godley & Creme continued to consistently deliver new product to record stores well into the 80s, they found much greater success as pioneering music video directors, and their work on videos like Duran Duran’s “Girls On Film”, Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit”, Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Two Tribes”, and the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” was instrumental in elevating the music video as an art form, and transforming MTV into something people might actually want to watch. Their own video for “Cry” borrowed the moody black-and-white Rembrandt lighting of “Every Breath You Take” for an endlessly morphing close-up portrait of a succession of lip-syncers on the verge of tears. The effect, which was groundbreaking at the time (it now appears a little crude from our CGI-enhanced vantage point), made for a video that was entrancing and moving is both its intimacy and simplicity. It’s no surprise sounds fresh almost 25 years later, and even less so that it’s found a new audience in such a quintessentially visual medium. It makes me want to go out and experience Grand Theft Auto IV myself.
