I find Jim's worst bits to be unlistenably poor. He's not an artist to me where even the clunkers are good like, say, Elton John** or The Beatles.
• Rebel without a Clue is a boring song, with a shitty 80s arrangement with annoyingly little audibly discernible structure.
• Holding Out For A Hero: Melody is completely forgettable, and sits uncomfortably atop a riff flown in from elsewhere… sounds like a frigging demo.
• Peel Out strikes me as an interesting enough song I guess, but the arrangement and production (which Jim was at least 50% in control of, right?) are flat and uneventful and boring.
Contrast this with It Just Won't Quit which is, to me, a fairly pedestrian song with a stunningly beautiful / stimulating / enchanting arrangement and production.
** Clunkers like his oft-criticised disco album where he contributes nothing but vocals — including Steve Lukather doing lead all over an 8 minute disco cover of Johnny B Goode! Fucking love it!
> Im curious, Jim is a great songwriter. the best. but every
> songwriter has a few clunkers.
>
> IMHO, besides the filler of the play MTYD, Jim's worst
> song has got to be "20th Century Fox"
|
