I grasped a nettle today. Not literally. I wasn’t really near any and I’ve never been entirely convinced that you wouldn’t still get stung regardless of such a gung-ho approach.
You know how it’s always better to quickly yank a sticking plaster from your hairy arm (I’m not making presumptions here, you may not have a hairy arm, but I do. In fact I have two), well I decided to tackle today the cassette sitting firmly atop my ‘dreadzone’ pile, Paul King’s one and only solo album, ‘Joy’, with Paul, it has to be said, looking ominously pensive rather than joyful on the cover.
Admittedly brilliantly produced by the legendary Dan Hartman, this turned out, as I’d feared, to be what can most kindly described as an inconsequential album. You’ll probably have to take my word for it, as I fear I may have bought the only copy.
Performances by all concerned are faultless, and there, I fear, lies the problem. It’s definitely lacklustre, although it certainly doesn’t lack lustre.
The other weakness here is the quality of the songs, and my scientifically unproven ‘track 7 theory’ (where I suggest you can judge the overall quality of an album by listening to its track 7) certainly hold true. Track 7 ‘It’s up to you’ is truly representative of the album – it’s just as ordinary as all of the other tracks.
Rather like a doomed football club the album does raise it’s game slightly towards the end, but the damage was really done at the beginning of the season and inevitably relegation beckons.
Not really awful, just very ordinary.
If you’re a fan of Paul King and you’re tempted to try and find your very own copy of ‘Joy’ then can I suggest instead that you hunt out his best work – ‘She has changed not you’ by ‘The Reluctant Stereotypes’. One of the great lost pop singles of the early 1980s.
Label – CBS
Year – 1987
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