Contributor
79 items by Stephen Holden
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52nd Street | ALBUM REVIEW
On 52nd Street and The Stranger, Billy Joel is the quintessential postrock entertainer: a vaudevillian piano man and mimic who, having come of age in the late Sixties, has the grasp of rock and the technical know-how...
December 14, 1978 12:00 AM ET -
Baltimore | ALBUM REVIEW
Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra each had a moment late in their careers when, facing middle age, they turned a single song into a transcendent statement of what their lives had meant. Holiday elevated a torch song,...
August 10, 1978 12:00 AM ET -
To Whom It May Concern | ALBUM REVIEW
"The sweetest music this side of heaven," the epithet misapplied to Guy Lombardo, is the aptest description I can think of to describe the Bee Gees at their best. Beginning with Odessa, a minor masterpiece of jewel-encrusted,...
December 8, 1976 12:00 AM ET -
Spitfire | ALBUM REVIEW
The only American rock bands that have enjoyed more than a decade of commercial success while evolving their own artistic visions are the Beach Boys and the Jefferson Airplane/Starship. As the Beach Boys defined pleasure in the...
August 26, 1976 12:00 AM ET -
Wings at the Speed of Sound | ALBUM REVIEW
In his post-Beatles albums, Paul McCartney has proven himself a clever miniaturist whose records resemble collages built around simple musical fragments, each of which is painstakingly produced. While some have dismissed McCartney's music as insufferably cute, uninspired...
May 20, 1976 12:00 AM ET -
Thoroughbred | ALBUM REVIEW
As straightforward a singer as she is a lyricist and composer, Carole King projects one of the most integrated personalities in pop. Her musical and intellectual scope is narrow, but her seven albums, with the exception of...
March 25, 1976 12:00 AM ET -
The Hissing of Summer Lawns | ALBUM REVIEW
With The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Joni Mitchell has moved beyond personal confession into the realm of social philosophy. All the characters are American stereotypes who act out socially determined rituals of power and submission in exquisitely...
January 15, 1976 12:00 AM ET -
Rock of the Westies | ALBUM REVIEW
Already the most commercially successful solo rock act since Elvis, Elton John continues to grow in popularity and there's no end in sight. Like the greatest show-business personalities, John displays phenomenal energy, shrewd professional judgment and a...
December 18, 1975 12:00 AM ET -
One Of These Nights | ALBUM REVIEW
The Eagles' fourth album represents the apex of post-Byrds Southern California rock. Their music reflects the Hollywood ethos of glamorous, narcissistic ennui, exhibiting the contradiction between the city's atmosphere of "laid-back" machismo and its desperate rootlessness of...
August 14, 1975 12:00 AM ET -
Main Course | ALBUM REVIEW
Main Course, the best-sounding Bee Gees album ever, represents a last-ditch effort to reestablish the group's mass popularity in front of their upcoming U.S. tour. My guess is that it should succeed, at least to some extent,...
July 17, 1975 12:00 AM ET -
Playing Possum | ALBUM REVIEW
The cover of Carly Simon's enjoyable new album is an indication of its best songs, which celebrate the body at play. Playing Possum represents a breakthrough of sorts for Simon. Earlier albums, through Hotcakes, depicted adolescent and...
June 19, 1975 12:00 AM ET -
Common Sense | ALBUM REVIEW
Common Sense is a confused, self-indulgent fourth album by a major songwriter gone downhill. Recorded in Memphis and Los Angeles with producer Steve Cropper, nine of John Prine's ten new songs have "rock" settings that feature electric...
May 22, 1975 12:00 AM ET -
Heart Like A Wheel | ALBUM REVIEW
Linda Ronstadt had her first hit, "Different Drum," in 1967, singing with a group called the Stone Poneys. She didn't have one again until "Long Long Time" in 1970. Though long acknowledged to be one of the...
January 16, 1975 12:00 AM ET -
Streetlife Serenade | ALBUM REVIEW
Billy Joel's pop schmaltz occupies a stylistic no man's land where musical and lyric truisms borrowed from disparate sources are forced together. A talented keyboardist, Joel's piano style creditably imitates early Elton John, while Joel's melodic and...
December 5, 1974 12:00 AM ET -
The Heart of Saturday Night | ALBUM REVIEW
Tom Waits is an urban romantic poet whose lyrics echo the oral Beat poetry pioneered by Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti and Corso in the Fifties. Like the Beats, Waits has an ear for the underlying rhythms of American...
December 5, 1974 12:00 AM ET -
Streetlights | ALBUM REVIEW
On her newest album Bonnie Raitt, one of the most gifted contemporary pop interpreters, partially succeeds in coping with uncongenial production by Jerry Ragovoy. The uneven results illustrate an important record industry problem: How are artists to...
November 7, 1974 12:00 AM ET -
Late For The Sky | ALBUM REVIEW
Like Browne's two previous albums, Late for the Sky contains no lyric sheet. The three or four hours required to make a full transcription will, however, be well worth the effort for anyone interested in discovering lyric...
November 7, 1974 12:00 AM ET -
Walking Man | ALBUM REVIEW
James Taylor's mosaic art embodies two primary contradictions: the public figure versus the private person, and more importantly, the schizoid quality of reflective intelligence. It is an art of balance, dependent on the juxtaposition of conflicting elements....
August 15, 1974 12:00 AM ET -
Etta James [Platinum Disc] | ALBUM REVIEW
Though the album was recorded in Hollywood, Gabriel Mekler's production of one of the great soul singers sounds as though it were made in Muscle Shoals, circa 1966 — the sight of great past sessions. Etta James...
April 11, 1974 12:00 AM ET -
Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back | ALBUM REVIEW
New albums by two survivors: One is a face-lift, the other a comeback. Of the two, Andy Williams' face-lift is preferable. Actually, Solitaire isn't an Andy Williams album at all but a Richard Perry album with Andy...
December 20, 1973 12:00 AM ET
