As the years pass and music moves further down diverging paths, there is a tendency to forget just how we got to this point. One of the things I love about music is that constant evolution; nothing is created without having been influenced by what came before. Someone, or some band, might come along as the \u201cbig new thing,\u201d but truth be told, we\u2019ve seen it before. Madonna begets a Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson begets a Justin Timberlake or Usher, Tina Turner begets Beyonc\u00e9. And The Beatles…well, they begat everyone didn\u2019t they?<\/p>\n
It is interesting to put yourself in the shoes of those kids in the \u201860s, who were just starting to form bands, write songs, perform for crowds, all in an attempt to be just like The Beatles. That legendary band was their influence, their direction; whatever you want to label it as, The Beatles were it.<\/i> And by the time those kids had grown up, it was the 1970s.<\/p>\n
Big Star certainly never reached a popularity of any particular note. The stories of this group are usually centered on critical acclaim with very few sales to back it up (#1 Record<\/i> sold less than 10,000 copies upon its release in 1972).\u00a0 The key members of the group were Alex Chilton (who admittedly had had some success with The Box Tops) and Chris Bell, a pair of kids who were lucky enough to see The Beatles roll through town during the \u201860s and decided they wanted that. Their first product, #1 Record<\/i>, is a testament to how much they loved that music.<\/p>\n
#1 Record<\/i> is far from solely a love letter to John, Paul, George, and Ringo; the sounds of the previous decade are all over. What is \u201cThe India Song\u201d but an attempt to add some Eastern inspiration \u00e0 la The White Album<\/i>? \u201cWhen My Baby\u2019s Beside Me\u201d tears its opening straight from The Byrds playbook. The acoustically driven \u201cWatch The Sunrise\u201d certainly brings to mind Crosby Stills & Nash on their debut album, with some stellar harmonizing going on from Big Star.<\/p>\n
The sentiment that Big Star expresses lyrically on this album directly cribs from the simpler lyrical content of the early \u201860s. These are not the most complex, soul-searching songs that have been written, but their adolescent exuberance is infectious. \u201cIn The Street\u201d expresses that idea that Brian Wilson used to sing about: getting the car and driving around with friends. \u201cThirteen\u201d is a stunning ballad that captures that wistfulness of being a teenager, that sense of worldliness that you haven\u2019t earned yet but somehow still feel.<\/p>\n
Complaining about rock\u2019s lack of success on today\u2019s charts certainly conjures up an image of an old man railing on about how the old days were so much better. But music isn\u2019t any better than it was; it\u2019s just different. With that being said, the pre-packaged, soulless quality behind today\u2019s biggest artists is a discouraging trend that I am not a huge fan of. I won\u2019t go so far as to say we need <\/i>more bands to come along like Big Star, or that we need<\/i> rock music to have a return to prominence. But it sure would be nice, wouldn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":31582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5658],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-43287","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-big-star","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43287","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\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43287"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}