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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: New Edition

  • Infatueighties: #80: “Can You Stand the Rain”

    Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, along with their mentor/former boss Prince, brought funk into the 1980s. With angular synthesized rhythms and large heapings of attitude, they hit their stride around mid-decade, scoring hits for Cheryl Lynn, The.S.O.S. Band, Alexander O’ Neal, and of course, Janet Jackson. 1986’s “Control” turned Janet from Michael’s cute little sister who starred on TV to Janet-Miss Jackson if you’re nasty, and set the standard for kid stars looking for a quick and safe jump into adulthood.

    Somewhere in Boston, the members of New Edition were watching and listening. Around the time the “Control” campaign wound down in 1987, the boy group had lost/kicked out founding member Bobby Brown, were in danger of losing lead singer Ralph Tresvant to a solo career and had hired vocally talented Johnny Gill as a potential replacement. After Tresvant reconsidered and decided to stay, the gentlemen hooked up with Jam & Lewis in Minneapolis to begin work on the product that would transform them from boys to men (the name of the resulting album, “Heart Break”‘s final track and also the name of a group that NE member Mike Bivins would discover just a few short years later).

    While “If It Isn’t Love” was the album’s biggest hit (charting at #7 pop), it was “Can You Stand the Rain” that proved to be the album’s most lasting song. An anthemic ballad with a mature lyric, it was the first NE track to successfully combine Tresvant’s boyish tenor with Gill’s chesty baritone. All the candy girls finally had a grown and sexy song to get down to. Like most of Jam & Lewis’ ballads (there are at least two more in this countdown), the song features a touch of melancholy as well. Despite narrowly missing the pop Top 40, this song spent 3 weeks at #1 on the R&B charts at the top of 1989 and sealed the deal on the longevity of New Edition’s career, a career that is now in its’ 25th year. Slow jams from the decade of excess don’t get much better than this…

  • Sound Dialogue – “The Block”

    One of the best things about being friends with Money Mike is that you can discuss music with him and he never gets sick of it. More importantly, he rarely has an ego about his music knowledge even though he’s forgotten more about music than I’ll ever know. I’m sure we’ve been in some petty arguments, but never because he simply had to showcase his knowledge about something. Thus, we decided to take that style of conversation and turn it into a column. Here’s your first edition of Sound Dialogue where we’ll look at albums, topics, or whatever else we want to chat about music wise and give it to you here. This time, we tackle the New Kids On The Block’s comeback album, The Block.

    GG: Why now? After 14 years, why did the New Kids On The Block come back now? What’s different about 2008 than say, 1998?

    MM: Your guess is as good as mine, because it doesn’t really make sense. If they were looking for a hit or the quick money, they would have done it ten years ago when Backstreet & *NSYNC were popular. Then again, at this point in time, they have the whole pie for themselves.

    I also think that enough time has passed that there’s a certain nostalgia for them. People don’t see them as a joke anymore.

    Photo By Alan Light

    GG: Do you think they fit into today’s pop music landscape? Is there a place for the New Kids? The whole guy group thing has pretty much died down unless your last name is Jonas.

    MM: With the difference being that the Jonas Brothers actually play instruments. You know, the landscape is so wide open right now. It’s more of a production style that works as opposed to any particular kind of artist. So I guess that if they have the right production, they have as much of a chance as anyone, and it looks like that’s what they went after with this album.

    GG: Speaking of the production, what did you think of it? They utilized many “hot” producers and one can argue that the music is actually overproduced.

    MM: How about “very” overproduced? The album almost sounds robotic. The instrumentation is almost completely electronic and the singing is covered in a ton of effects. It’s not like these guys can’t sing. There wasn’t pro-tools and auto-tune in the Eighties.

    GG: I want to get into the auto-tune stuff in a bit. But first, let’s talk about some of the songs. In my opinion, I think the best songs on the album are the ones in which they just sing in harmony with catchy hooks featuring pop style production that is simple and blends with the harmonies. For instance, “Single” with Ne-Yo isn’t a barn burner, but it’s the perfect song to reintroduce the New Kids. You mentioned the electronic instrumentation. One of my major complaints about the album is an over abundance of that style, and less of a smart “radio” style song in the same vein as “Single”. Why do you think they didn’t go more of that route?

    MM: I don’t necessarily know that that’s the route Top 40 radio is in right now. I agree that the more melodic songs like “Single”, “2 in the Morning” and “Stare at You” are by far the best songs on the album, but I’m sure someone at the label convinced them that the sort of amelodic club bangers were the way to go.

    GG: Do you think they’ve gone the right route single wise? “Summertime” didn’t seem to catch on, and really, there’s only one chance to make that first impression from a 14 year lay off. I loved the song myself, but it might not have been the big single to get people to perk their ears up. I really like “Single” as well, and if you can’t rise up on the charts with Ne-Yo, who can help you with that? Don’t say Chris Brown.

    What did you think about the choice of the first two singles, and secondly, what do you think will be the third single?

    MM: I think “Summertime” was the right look, and while it wasn’t a huge hit, it did hit the Top 40 and has been downloaded almost half a million times. I honestly don’t know that they’re capable of expanding beyond what their target demo initially was. I mean, it’s not like cats on the street are suddenly gonna switch off from Lil Wayne to New Kids on the Block.

    (more…)

  • Respect Due: New Edition, “The O.G.s from O.P.”

    I’ll let New Kids on the Block, tell it-via the liner notes to their new CD “The Block”.

    Donnie Wahlberg: We were not the first, you were. My respect always.

    Joey McIntyre: Like a young basketball player growing up in Boston looked to Larry Bird, so I looked to you. You are pure class. Without you, there is no us.

    The gentlemen Donnie and Joey are referring to?: Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, Bobby Brown, Ronnie DeVoe, Johnny Gill and Ralph Tresvant, otherwise known as New Edition.

    In all the hoopla surrounding NKOTB’s return after a fourteen-year absence, one thing that seems to have been forgotten is that the entire template their career was based on came from New Edition, quite literally. The New Kids were founded in 1984, the same year that New Edition split acrimoniously from writer/producer Maurice Starr. Burnt by the perceived desertion, Starr vowed to create a group of white youngsters and make them more popular-better-than N.E.

    From a popularity standpoint, it would seem that there was no contest. From 1988-1991 or so, the New Kids were a juggernaut beyond belief-scoring 9 Top 10 pop hits, two #1 albums and sold-out tours around the globe-not to mention a ton of merchandising initiatives that ranged from baseball caps to a cartoon. However, a closer look reveals that during the same 3 year span, not only did New Edition rack up a multi-platinum album of their own, as well as 4 Top 10 R&B hits and an American Music Award, but they turned into the R&B group version of the Transformers.

    Bobby Brown may be a laughing stock now, but a lot of you readers old enough to remember know that for a brief time, Bobby was the hottest male singer in the country. “Don’t Be Cruel” was 1989’s #1 album, according to Billboard magazine (“Hangin’ Tough” settled for the runner-up spot). In the same three years that NKOTB was on top of the world, Bobby scored 7 Top 10 pop singles, including two #1 hits. Four of those seven songs went #1 R&B, and he picked up a Grammy on top of all that. Auxiliary members Bell, Bivins and DeVoe racked up a multi-platinum album in “Poison”, while scoring five Top 10 R&B singles and then striking gold again with a remix album. Brown’s replacement, Johnny Gill, went multi-platinum with his own solo album (4 Top Ten R&B hits, including 3 #1s), and Tresvant, the group’s lead singer, came through with an additional three R&B top tens. So in the same time the New Kids were taking over the pop world, N.E. and their offshoots sold some 16 million albums and snagged 22 Top 10 R&B singles and 13 Top 10 pop singles. Add in their cumulative and individual success before and since, and there is no doubt that these guys are a legendary bunch. Not to mention the fact that Bivins discovered the most successful R&B act of the Nineties, Boyz II Men.

    From a qualitative standpoint, you’d have to be extremely biased to even suggest that the New Kids’ recorded output is better than New Edition’s. Even aside from Brown and BBD’s groundbreaking solo success, N.E.’s seven album catalog includes one stellar album (1988’s “Heart Break”) and a couple of very good ones. Even their teen-pop stuff has aged better than “Hangin’ Tough” and “Step By Step” (well, with the exception of that terrible Fifties cover album they did). A small sampling of their classic singles: 1983’s “Candy Girl”, which knocked “Beat It” out of the #1 spot on the R&B charts. “Cool it Now” and “Mr. Telephone Man”, both bubblegum classics. “Can You Stand the Rain” is one of the most beloved slow jams of the Eighties. And the fellas still pack them in on tour and have solidified their position as one of the tightest live outfits in R&B, and one of the last of a dying breed of singing groups, outlasting just about every group that arrived in their wake. I saw them perform four or five years ago in New York and they were sharp as a tack, in strong voice and choreographed perfectly.

    Unlike the New Kids, New Edition never stayed apart for long. Sporadic reunions in between solo projects eventually led to 1996’s #1 multi-platinum “Home Again” album (the only album to feature all six members), while even 2004’s lukewarm, Puff Daddy-assisted “One Love” went Gold. They are celebrating their 25th anniversary this year-with a rumored tour that will (possibly) feature Brown and a rumored movie on the horizon. Anyone who saw their drama-filled “Behind the Music” (which became the highest rated first-run episode of “BTM” in the network’s history), must be salivating at the thought of that film hitting the small or big screen.

    Hey, I love the New Kids, you know? Their music is a constant reminder of my youth, and at it’s best, is well-crafted mindless pop. But in a lot of situations where something or someone gets successful, things that paved the way for that success get lost in the sauce. New Edition not only did it first-they did it best, and as such, are worthy of some serious props. Not only the New Kids-but a gang of groups from The Force MDs and Hi-Five to Backstreet Boys and *Nsync owe these guys a serious debt of gratitude.