Track Listing
1. I Wanna Be Adored
2. Waterfall
3. She Bangs The Drums
4. Don't Stop
5. Bye Bye Badman
6. Elizabeth My Dear
7. Song For My Sugar Spun Sister
8. Made Of Stone
9. Shoot You Down
10. This Is The One
11. I Am The Resurrection
Review
We come to what is, in my opinion, possibly the most overrated album of all time. It has topped a bunch of lists of "Best UK albums of all time" it is generally recognised as a piece of genius music making etc... It is still derivative and not really that impressive.
This is not to say that it isn't a good album, it is perfectly servicable, but I wouldn't be in my top 20 British albums of all time, much less number one. I think people who adore this have a very limited knowledge of the history of pop music. They probably never heard the Byrds.
If taking the Byrds and the Beatles and slightly updating it for the late 80s is being a genius of originality I wonder what was Brian Eno or David Bowie, or Joy Division, or Led Zeppelin or the Happy Mondays or The Fall or the countless more original British artists that I can think of off the top of my head.
The album is pleasant the music is jangly and inoffensive, I quite like it, it just does not deserve the adoration that it gets which annoys me tremendously. Of course it brought about the birth of Brit-Pop and mediocre bands like Oasis casting a new fad which would end the good music produced in Manchester until the early 90s. This is the beginning of the end for a city that was for more than a decade, in terms of sheer quality by square inch, the greatest musical metropolis in the world. Fortunately there are still some nice, original and great things to come from my adopted home-town. This one was just nice.
Track Highlights
1. I Am The Resurrection
2. Waterfall
3. She Bangs the Drums
4. Bye Bye Badman
Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The Stone Roses had been formed in 1984, yet 1989 saw their debut full length release (the band had released a handful of singles in the previous years, on a variety of labels). The band were from Manchester where the Madchester movement was centred. Despite not considering themselves as a Madchester group, with their eponymous début The Stone Roses found themselves riding a wave of nationwide success along with Madchester groups such as the Inspiral Carpets and Happy Mondays. The Roses recorded the album with John Leckie, a notable producer who had worked with Pink Floyd on Meddle and it was released by Silvertone, a division of Zomba Records created to work with what they called "new rock" acts.
The Byrds... oh sorry... The Stone Roses with I am the Resurrection:
3 comments:
Then I guess you're pretty happy that they failed pretty miserably after this album, huh?
I always valued this album more in terms of how amazingly catchy the songs were than how groundbreaking it was. It's pretty hard to write an album where every single track is a really fun pop song.
That said, it's pretty overrated.
David Cosby: Actually, yeah. Just goes to show.
Tom Meade: They are quite catchy, but there is nothing particularly fascinating about them beyond that.
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