The Nylon Curtain
"Goodnight Saigon," the turning point of Billy Joel's ambitious new album, may well be remembered as the ultimate pop-music epitaph to the Vietnam War. Into a pastoral soundscape a sputtering...
View ArticleForever, For Always, For Love
The most gifted male pop-soul singer of his generation, Luther Vandross has broken away from the macho chest-beating of the likes of Teddy Pendergrass by crooning instead of roaring at moments of high...
View ArticleWinds of Change
Though the Jefferson Starship's musical horizons have shrunk from mystical folk-rock id mundance hard rock, the old bird still refuses to land. On Winds of Change, the Starship's hard-rock image is...
View ArticleSynchronicity
Synchronicity is a work of dazzling surfaces and glacial shadows. Sunny pop melodies echo with ominous sound effects. Pithy verses deal with doomsday. A battery of rhythms — pop, reggae and African —...
View ArticleDaylight Again
First, last and always, there is the blend. The way the three voices fit together remains one of the most singular and pleasing harmonic fusions in all of rock. And that is why, when the solo careers...
View ArticlePower Of Love
In the seven albums (eight, counting a 1989 best-of package) that he has released in the last decade, Luther Vandross has established himself as Smokey Robinson's successor in building a personalized...
View ArticleWhat You See Is What You Sweat
"Yo, gang! let's kick the ballistics!" shouts Aretha Franklin in the opening moments of "Everyday People," her spirited house-music remake of Sly Stone's classic hippie anthem. The song, which is heard...
View ArticleMy World
Willie Nelson and Ray Charles are such monumental personalities that it almost doesn't matter what kinds of records they make. Each man ranks among the dozen or so pop legends who don't have to do much...
View ArticleMusic Box
With a voice that could stop a truck, a husband (Sony Records chief Tommy Mottola) who runs the store and only the hottest songwriting and producing collaborators going (Walter Afanasieff, C+C Music...
View ArticleJohn Lennon’s Music: A Range of Genius
More than any other rock musician (with the possible exception of Bob Dylan), John Lennon personalized the political and politicized the personal
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