Saturday, March 31, 2007
life is very short and there's no t-i-i-i-ime...
stevie067.jpg


Yes, more about Stevie. I could fill a thousand grade-school composition notebooks with praise, criticism and rumination on Stevland Judkins/Morris/Wonder and never run out of things to say. One thing that gets lost amidst the zoom-in on his 70's output, though, is how great an interpreter of other people's compositions he was before he moved to exclusively self-penned material. In particular, I'm listening to his version of "We Can Work It Out," which eclipses the Beatles own rendition by a miracle mile. Perhaps because he sings like he's desperately meaning (and needing) it, whereas we all know what completely fucking useless human beings McCartney and Lennon turned into. It's what, five years between "We Can Work It Out" and "How Do You Sleep?" That latter song, for the record, boasts one of the most inane lyrics in pop history. Even as far as diss tracks go, it's pretty limp- I doubt it had Ringo fearing he'd be the next contestant on that Summer Jam screen.

Anyway, Stevie's "We Can Work It Out" is choice, from the echoed backing yelps at the end of every other line in the verse to the scuzzed-up backbeat, to the veering-towards falsetto he dips into as the song progresses. Even the harmonica solo is cool. Who the hell else makes harmonica solos sound cool?

Cross-posted with mothafuckin' S&M.


Posted by Mallory on Saturday, March 31, 2007 at 10:07 PM |

 
 
The FunkyFunky 7 Are:
A group of kids with WAY too much time on their hands.
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