Blog favourite Bobby Caldwell had many stages to his career. Today I’m going to take a look at a song written by Caldwell for the funk group The Commodores. After a period of writing for others, Caldwell recorded a bunch of these tunes as his own and released them on the album “Stuck on you”. This is a live version of Janet
With the full entourage of a typical early 90s tour band, reverbed
drums push us into the groove, driven by guitars and softened by keys. Caldwell’s
vocal is on point as ever, as he tells the story of Janet over a simple 4 chord
loop. The pre-chorus (she tells you lies) brings out a wonderful countermelody
interaction with the keyboards.
The chorus is based harmonically on the same material as the
verse, like a typical disco song, but it does have the flourishes of backing
vocals and dramatic basslines. After the chorus a sharp guitar solo leads us
back to the repeat.
The second guitar solo is on point, with jazz licks, but
keeping a bit of a David Gilmour influence. It then spits us into the bridge, a
nice break. I particularly like the 3:2 polyrhythm Caldwell does with his
backing singers.
The chorus repeats until the end, with the vocals devolving
into simply “Janet – woah Janet” The song is a fade out song but they had to
end it some way live, and I think the guitar and sax interplay then a sudden
out of the blues pentationic drop did fine.
Final Rating: 8/10
Comparative Ranking List:
1. Dear Prudence: 10/10
2. Rachmaninov Prelude in G (Original): 9/10
3. Stranger In Moscow 9/10
4. Black Sands: 9/10
5. Jupiter (The Planets): 9/10
6. Hollywood Heart: 8/10
7. Make It Easy on Yourself 8/10
8. Janet 8/10
9. Another Day in America: 8/10
10. Mi Re (Give into life)
11. Don’t Let it Show 7/10
12. Adagio For Strings 7/10
13. It’s Your Move (Parkinson) 7/10
14. It’s Your Move (Vaporwave Version) 7/10
15. It’s Your Move (Ross) 7/10
16. Don’t Lead Me On 7/10
17. Rachmaninov Prelude in G (VSO): 5/10
Comments
Post a Comment