{"id":41648,"date":"2009-08-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/every-day-is-a-new-day\/"},"modified":"2009-08-19T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-19T00:00:00","slug":"every-day-is-a-new-day","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/every-day-is-a-new-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Day Is A New Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love Diana Ross; she\u2019s beautiful, glamorous, soulful, charismatic\u2026I could go on, but let\u2019s just say that I adore her and leave it at that.\u00a0 Her recording career has been frustrating to say the least, though. After breaking from the confines of Motown, Ross signed a lucrative deal (even by today\u2019s standards) with RCA and took complete control of her career.\u00a0 She set up her own company and went on to demand executive producer status on all of her albums.\u00a0 This, of course, meant that for Miss Ross, her output at times was patchy and self-obsessed (Ross<\/i> from 1983), and even a return to Motown and Nile Rodgers producing couldn\u2019t lift her game (Workin\u2019 Overtime <\/i>anyone?).<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Throughout the \u201890s, Ross relied on mainly compilations and box-sets to keep her flame burning.\u00a0 There were moments of brilliance, namely 1993\u2019s Stolen Moments <\/i>live set and, of all things, a wonderful Christmas album with A Very Special Season <\/i>released the following year. Her penultimate original album, Take Me Higher<\/i>, received terrible reviews and although I didn\u2019t think it too bad at all, it\u2019s not great.\u00a0 That brings us to her last album of original material, Every Day Is A New Day<\/i>, released ten years ago.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with a couple of positives; the cover and booklet featured shots of Ross looking as ravishing as ever, and her voice by this time had matured to a beautiful, deeper, sexier instrument than it had been known for. Gone were the slightly whiny tones that were evident when she reached for high notes; here she sounds cool, assured, and soulful. A cavalcade of writers and producers were assembled to introduce her into the new millennium, and although they did successfully update her sound, the old saying about too many cooks comes to mind by the time this one is even halfway done. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

The disc opens on a high note with a cover of \u201cHe Lives In You\u201d from The Lion King<\/i>.\u00a0 Ross delivers a great vocal performance and the track is given the anthemic treatment it deserves.\u00a0 Next up is a run-of-the-mill R&B love song, \u201cLove Is All That Matters;\u201d even the title is a clich\u00e9 and the lyric, written by Diane Warren, is no better.\u201cUntil We Meet Again\u201d fares much better, if not just for Ross\u2019 touching delivery of a lyric that at the time was obviously close to her heart (at the time, she was in the process of a divorce she did not want from her mountaineering shipping magnate husband Arne Naess Jr.).<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cGot To Be Free\u201d again laments the pain of an unwanted but necessary separation. It takes a couple of plays to warm to this one, but it gets the job done in the end. The theme remains the same for \u201cNot Over You Yet,\u201d which is definitely the album\u2019s strongest and most focused track. The remix of it became a top ten hit in the UK, and Ross once again delivers a heartfelt reading of the personalized lyric, \u201cYou were the first who ever brought me out \/ Showed me what life and love was all about \/ Gave me things that I never need \/ You\u2019re in my thoughts, my every dream.\u201d<\/o:p><\/p>\n

But it\u2019s here the album takes a nosedive in the taste stakes that it never fully recovers from.\u00a0 \u201cSo They Say\u201d and the title-track sucks whatever life and class that the team has developed up to this point away in one fell swoop. They are clich\u00e9-ridden, boring, lifeless R&B songs that should have never made it passed the demo stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cSugarfree\u201d is an uber-cool track that is let down by yet another lost love lyric; even Ross herself sounds like she\u2019s had enough by this point. It seems as though Ross went out of her way to let the world know that the love of her life fell out of love with her and traded her in for a younger model.\u00a0 Yes, it\u2019s sad, but how many songs do we need to remind us?<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Ross collaborated with Christopher Ward and Tim Tickner and wrote one of the album\u2019s strongest tracks, \u201cHope Is An Open Window.\u201d A gospel choir and Ross\u2019s passionate delivery make for a true lost gem.\u00a0 Finally, some elevation for the spirit is found within the introspective lyric. Maybe Miss Ross should put pen to paper more often. The album closes with a pure disco cover of \u201cCarry On.\u201d A list of divas that haven\u2019t covered this one would certainly be shorter than the list of those who have.\u00a0 It adds nothing but is a happy note to say goodbye with.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

So there it is, a for the most part a heartbreaking, morbid account of Diana Ross\u2019s divorce.\u00a0 Too many sad, flat songs killed what had the potential to be a fantastic record. Following Naess\u2019 death in 2004 (a result of a mountain climbing accident) Ross called him the love of her life and lamented how she still deeply she still cared for him. One listen to this and there\u2019s no doubting it. The only problem is while this disc no doubt acted as therapy for her, we are left with yet another patchy release from a true legend that is just not good enough.<\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":30018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7892],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-41648","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-diana-ross","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41648","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\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41648"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41648"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}