After three successful albums and a couple of hit singles, who
\nwould have expected that Bad Company’s fourth album
\nBurnin’ Sky<\/i> would be a relative mystery to all but the
\nfaithful fans?<\/p>\n
After achieving success with songs like “Can’t Get Enough,”
\n“Feel Like Makin’ Love” and “Run With The Pack,” it is kind of
\nsurprising that this 1977 release didn’t spawn any major hits.
\nMaybe the record-buying public saw something the rest of
\ncivilization didn’t – that this was simply an average effort from
\nPaul Rodgers and crew.<\/p>\n
The title track is probably the best-known cut, having received
\nmore airplay as over 20 years have passed since its release.
\nAnchored with a funky beat provided by bassist Boz Burrell and
\ndrummer Simon Kirke, Rodgers provides a powerful lead vocal while
\nguitarist Mick Ralphs throws in some decent fills off his Les Paul.
\nIf any song off
\nBurnin’ Sky<\/i> could have been a hit, this is the one I would
\nhave selected.<\/p>\n
Actually, the immediate followup, “Morning Sun,” is the better
\nof the two tracks (featuring some tasty 12-string acoustic work
\nfrom Ralphs), but to the AM market of the time, such a song might
\nhave been seen as too slow to be a hit. Pity… it’s a beautiful
\nsong that I have yet to tire of.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, this is where the top-notch material on
\nBurnin’ Sky<\/i> ends. Most of the remainder of the album, while
\nnot atrocious, just doesn’t do anything special for the band. It’s
\nalmost as if they locked themselves into a pattern somewhere around
\nthe time of
\nStraight Shooter<\/i> and never deviated much from the musical
\nformula. You can find the more ballsy work like “Heartbeat”
\nsounding a lot like older Bad Company songs (“Sweet Little Sister”
\ncomes to mind), while the slower rockers like “Leaving You” and
\n“Passing Time” could well have been tracks left over from the
\nRun With The Pack<\/i> sessions.<\/p>\n
Only one major mistake is committed on
\nBurnin’ Sky<\/i> – the experimental track “Master Of Ceremonies,”
\nwhich is incredibly painful to listen to. Rodgers’s attempt to do a
\nhiccup-like vocal grates on the listener’s eardrums like a potato
\non a Super Slicer. This is a track that should never have seen the
\nlight of day, and should be avoided at all costs.<\/p>\n
The biggest problem with
\nBurnin’ Sky<\/i> is that it sounds like it’s a very tentative
\nalbum. It’s almost as if Bad Company didn’t know which direction
\nthey wanted to take their music in, so they played the safer,
\nmiddle ground. The end result is a very sterile album with a few
\nmoments of the old brilliance that this band had in their earlier
\ndays.<\/p>\n
Is
\nBurnin’ Sky<\/i> worth picking up? This is one of the few times
\nwhere I honestly can’t say “yes” or “no” definitively. This is an
\nalbum that is very much a roll of the dice for whomever decided to
\nbuy it – and whether you’ll like it or not is about as definite as
\nfinding matching snowflakes. If you’re looking for the hit singles,
\nyou may wish to pass on it, but if you liked their older work, then
\nit might be worth picking this one up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5720],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-35951","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-bad-company","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35951"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35951"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}