MUSIC THREAD

Assuming this is actually happening, looking forward to this: http://www.nme.com/news/neil-young/74943

 

Attention Todd Rundgren fans:

Here's a well-done "greatest hits" compilation some guy put together on YouTube:

This covers 1970-78 (with a live version of "Open My Eyes" getting a Nazz song in there)

Starts off a little slow with ballads (the first "side" of the double LP), but that's how Todd's career went, too.

 

Thanks for the link, Coco.

Reminds I haven't given side two of Faithful a spin in years. Gonna tonight.

 

What did everyone think of High Hopes? It must be the noisiest Bruce Springsteen album.

Full album stream:

 

I'm still torn as to what I want latter-career Bruce Springsteen to sound like. I don't think this is it.

I would love to see what Daniel Lanois could do with Springsteen, like what he did for Dylan in Oh Mercy and Time Out of Mind.

 

I want late-period Bruce Springsteen to sound like most of Wrecking Ball.

 

I like "High Hopes" more than I expected. Granted, I didn't expect much, but the best parts are pretty good.

I read a review that framed it pretty well: Bruce is done with the big, landmark albums, and now seems to be in a stage where he wants to get work out there. The new album is not the event for him that it once was, and he can now just do a "workmanlike" job without the expectations that used to come with it. That works for me. There's some really generic stuff on the new one to me, and I've never been a big Morello guy, but the high points are pretty good and it's overall an enjoyable listen. I think that's all you can reasonably expect at this stage, and he delivered.

 

But none of that was true for Wrecking Ball, which absolutely was a huge seller with enormous ambition.

 

Near as I can tell, "Wrecking Ball" is the worst-selling studio album of his career.

 

Both Wrecking Ball and High Hopes topped the charts. Album sales are down across the board, though, so of course the actual numbers are lower. But less than two years after Wrecking Ball, High Hopes barely sold half as many copies in its opening week.

It also isn't going to be on many album of the year lists. Wrecking Ball topped Rolling Stone's list and was nearly ubiquitous on top 25 lists.

 

Springsteen could record himself farting "Hava Nagila" and it would top Rolling Stone's list.

"Wrecking Ball" is Springsteen's only album to not even go gold in the US. There were 49 albums that outsold it in the US in 2012.

"Enormous ambition" is in the eye of the beholder. You have a higher opinion of it than I do. Either way, "huge seller" it was not. It was commercial flop by any reasonable Springsteen standard.