Pop Music Notes

A couple of weeks ago, I was going through some boxes that I have in storage, and I came across a stash of cassette tapes that were just collecting dust. Mainly from the late 80s and early 90s, I have looked at them several times over the years, but never had the heart to part with them. Fast forward a week later, and as I was sitting in my car, changing channels on the radio, I realized that I have a cassette player in my car that I had never used. (Yeah…clueless, right?) Since I just recently wrote about Climie Fisher, I decided to pull the tape out and throw it in the car. As a result, I think I have a new feature for the blog. Take an old-school tape, throw it in the deck, and see if it holds up. Here goes…

Everything starts off well, with their only US hit “Love Changes Everything”. There are songs from your past that hold up well enough that they can slip right back into your daily playlist, and this one’s in that elite class. Compare that to “Rise to the Occasion”, which I can recognize why I liked at the time, but doesn’t hold up so well 20 years later. (Don’t get me started on the hip-hop remix, which was dated as soon as it hit the airwaves) Track #3 is “I Won’t Bleed For You”, and it’s typical record filler.

Interesting fact that I had completely forgotten about: “Room to Move”, which was a top 10 hit here in the US for Animotion, was written and originally recorded by Climie Fisher. Their version is decent, although the male/female trade-off vocals on the Animotion version provide the more-superior version of the song. In fact, the contrast of vocals between these two versions provided both a blessing and a curse for Clime Fisher. Simon Climie has such a distinct voice that it borders on “love it or hate it”. One of the reasons that I think “Rise” didn’t do well in the US was because there were plenty of male vocalists in the mid- to late-80s doing the sensitive vocals on emotional ballads (Peter Cetera, anyone?) that there just wasn’t a need for CF’s ballad at the time. In fact, it was only when the hip-hop version was released that the song caught fire in other territories.

Here’s the worst part of the review for me: the rest of the cassette was good. Good, not great, and a bit non-descript. I am sure that the second side of the album was intended to flow, but there is too much flow at times, and you almost feel like you are listening to a 10-minute track instead of 3 regular length songs. Would I put this on in the background and like it? Sure. Would I go out of my way to listen to side two of Everything? Not likely.