What happens when a guy goes from some of the crappiest pop made to hard rocking? He gets compared to Jimi Hendrix.
Lenny Kravitz - Are You Gonna Go My Way
Lenny Kravitz has had an interesting career with the charts. Besides being called Mr. Lisa Bonet (don’t remember her? she was the hot Cosby kid) he had a hit with this annoying song: Read the rest of this entry »
As promised in the mission statement of this website, I am putting out a “guilty pleasure” in the list.
The first season of American Idol is the only one I watched all the way through. The second season bored me after the audition process due to the, well, boring contestants. Every season after that got worse until the point where I no longer care or watch. I think I got through maybe four seasons of auditions before I just gave up entirely.
For my money Nikki McKibbin was the better rocker of the first season group, but Kelly Clarkson did have something.
Unfortunately her first album, while a major seller, is not what could be called the greatest thing she would ever put out.
Her latest album, All I Ever Wanted, isn’t that great of an album either.
Kelly Clarkson - All I Ever Wanted
Every song on this album sounds like the request of a teenager on the radio. A teenager playing the most idiotic game of “break up/make up” in high school you ever saw. The lyrics are nothing more than pandering to that age and mindset. There is no growth from Kelly as an artist, which is something we did see on the previous two albums.
No one can deny the success that Weird Al Yankovic has had in his career. Starting out sending tapes to Dr. Demento for his radio show, then finally getting some recognition on radio. Yet, he was still considered a novelty act and wasn’t given the time of day as having any staying power. Look at his predecessor and influence in the parody/funny song genre; Allan Sherman had a handful of hits then pretty much disappeared from active parody.
Al was written off as perhaps being able to have two albums worth of material before fading into the background. The sales of his second album being poor didn’t help. Yet, here he is so many decades later and still pumping out parodies, including his first ever #1 single.
I think the first time I ever got introduced to Weird Al was because of UHF, his wonderfully done parody movie with a plot. It was running as the weekend movie on the local NBC affiliate and I happened to catch it. As young as I was I got most of the references and laughed way harder than I should have. This would also be my long descent into becoming a geek later in life, mind you.
It wasn’t until later in life, with the album being discussed here, that I got into Al’s music directly. It was all because of one track.
Weird Al Yankovic - Alapalooza
There are quite a few different styles of parody on this album. Prince has never allowed Al to record a parody of his music, but Traffic Jam is a complete Let’s Go Crazy style parody. There is the one parody that annoys everyone as much as the original and that is Achy Breaky Song, a parody of Achy Breaky Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus (for the young-uns, that be Miley Cyrus’ daddy).
Fark.com