Contributor
79 items by Stephen Holden
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Being With You | ALBUM REVIEW
Smokey Robinson is that rare pop singer whose rhapsodic lyricism hasn't diminished with approaching middle age. Indeed, time has added a metaphysical depth to his art. The postadolescent Romeo who created "The Tracks of My Tears" and...
April 16, 1981 12:00 AM ET -
9 To 5 And Odd Jobs | ALBUM REVIEW
After a string of abysmal pop records on which her kittenish treatment of fatuous material turned her into a bad joke, Dolly Parton makes an impressive comeback with 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs. Parton's power as...
March 5, 1981 12:00 AM ET -
Faces | ALBUM REVIEW
The gaudiest Earth, Wind and Fire album to date, Faces is an effervescent pop-funk pageant with lots of color and not much substance. None of its fifteen songs is as striking as "That's the Way of the...
March 5, 1981 12:00 AM ET -
Heartattack And Vine | ALBUM REVIEW
On Heartattack and Vine, the patron saint of America's hobo hipsters returns to the sentimental ballad style he abandoned for jazzier, less song-oriented turf after The Heart of Saturday Night. Though Tom Waits' new album sports its...
February 5, 1981 12:00 AM ET -
Hotter Than July | ALBUM REVIEW
Though smaller scaled and rougher than Songs in the Key of Life and Journey through the Secret Life of Plants, Stevie Wonder's Hotter than July is no less macrocosmic in its outlook. Only less messianic. Again, Wonder...
February 5, 1981 12:00 AM ET -
One-Trick Pony | ALBUM REVIEW
Paul Simon's One-Trick Pony is a morose little art film about a minor Sixties pop star, Jonah Levin, who blows his only chance for a comeback by refusing to let a hack producer (played knowingly by Lou...
October 16, 1980 12:00 AM ET -
McCartney II | ALBUM REVIEW
McCartney II is an album of aural doodles designed for the amusement of very young children. Recorded at home, with the instruments plugged into a sixteen-track tape machine, it's a crude affair that depends more on synthesizers...
July 24, 1980 12:00 AM ET -
Keepin' The Summer Alive | ALBUM REVIEW
Had it been released five years ago, when gasoline was cheaper, nuclear energy "safe" and punk rock only a rumor, Keepin' the Summer Alive might have given the Beach Boys one last platinum-perfect wave to ride out...
May 15, 1980 12:00 AM ET -
Prince | ALBUM REVIEW
Not only does Prince possess the most thrilling R&B falsetto since Smokey Robinson, but this nineteen-year-old. Minneapolis-bred Wunderkind is his own writer-producer and one-man band, playing synthesizer, guitar, drums and percussion. Whereas Prince's debut album (last year's...
April 3, 1980 12:00 AM ET -
Mad Love | ALBUM REVIEW
With its strikingly lurid pink-and-black punk graphics showing the star glowering like a hopped-up minx, Mad Love is a splashy tribute by Linda Ronstadt and producer Peter Asher to the current rock & roll revival. At the...
April 3, 1980 12:00 AM ET -
Victim of Love | ALBUM REVIEW
Elton John's entry into the rock-disco sweepstakes comes a year too late to make much of an impact. Moreover, Victim of Love doesn't contain any John songs: producer Pete Bellotte, best known for his work with Donna...
December 13, 1979 12:00 AM ET -
Tusk | ALBUM REVIEW
At a cost of two years and well over a million dollars, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk represents both the last word in lavish California studio pop and a brave but tentative lurch forward by the one Seventies group...
December 13, 1979 12:00 AM ET -
The Glow | ALBUM REVIEW
Bonnie Raitt is too gifted to make an unlistenable album, but her eagerly awaited collaboration with producer Peter Asher is a solemn bore. Asher has recorded Raitt exactly as he does Linda Ronstadt, mixing R&B oldies with...
November 29, 1979 12:00 AM ET -
Off The Wall | ALBUM REVIEW
Like any an aging child star, Michael Jackson has had to grow up gracefully in public in order to survive. Until now, he's understandably clung to the remnants of his original Peter Pan of Motown image while cautiously...
November 1, 1979 12:00 AM ET -
Born Again | ALBUM REVIEW
Randy Newman and Stephen Sondheim, two of this decade's finest songwriter-craftsmen, are both misanthropes intent on subverting the optimism generally associated with American popular music. But until their most recent works, each man took care not to...
October 4, 1979 12:00 AM ET -
Flag | ALBUM REVIEW
The James Taylor who gazes out from the gatefold of Flag is an emaciated, jaundiced Yankee eccentric glaring at us with cold, eagleeyed skepticism. The picture is almost the negative of the movie-star-glamorous photo on the cover...
June 28, 1979 12:00 AM ET -
Breakfast In America | ALBUM REVIEW
Breakfast in America is a textbook-perfect album of post-Beatles, keyboard-centered English art rock that strikes the shrewdest possible balance between quasi-symphonic classicism and rock & roll. Whereas Supertramp's earlier LPs were bogged down by swatches of meandering,...
June 14, 1979 12:00 AM ET -
George Harrison | ALBUM REVIEW
Time hasn't treated the individual Beatles' solo projects kindly. Probably most of John Lennon's self-advertisements were never intended to reverberate any longer than the now-defunct media myths they once exploited. Paul McCartney carries on as a singles...
April 19, 1979 12:00 AM ET -
Spirits Having Flown | ALBUM REVIEW
"The record the world's been waiting for," reads an ad for Spirits Having Flown, and that's not just hype, since the Bee Gees' new album represents a deliberate attempt to fashion a "global" pop. Instead of extending...
April 5, 1979 12:00 AM ET -
A Single Man | ALBUM REVIEW
For his first album in two years, Elton John's wiped the slate clean and exchanged longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin for War of the Worlds lyricist Gary Osborne. Instead of recording with a set band and producer Gus...
January 25, 1979 12:00 AM ET
