Rod Stewart: Smiler [Mercury, 1974]Except for an embarrassingly unnatural "Natural Man" (that's right, Aretha's), the failure here is elusive, but that doesn't make it any less real--spiritual tone, energy, horns, something like that. For me, the better part of valor is to give up before the Elton John track wears out the way the Sam Cooke stuff and "Dixie Toot" already have. B-
>>128219535It's the weakest of his 69-74 run and an unnerving sign that Stewart was turning 30 shortly and about to fall off hard. Lots of rockers fell victim to their 30th birthday, a few like Neil Young managed to somehow prolong their 20s but most became increasingly lame the older they got.
Rod Stewart fucking sucks, man, his audience are, like, 60 year old women who look like a leather handbag and sound like Patty and Selma.
>>128219535It has its moments but there's too much filler.
42 minutes of "bleh don't care anymore, where's the coke?"
>>128219807Rod himself has said Smiler was crap.
If you compare Smiler to anything Rod has done in the 21st century it would be a great album. If you compare it to his 1975-86 run it's a decent album. If you compare it to the first four albums it's a 3/10. Still, some of his late 80s and 90s albums aren't bad either.
>>128219942Atlantic Crossing is def. going through the motions and the albums after it. AC still had decent ballads if less than the ballads on albums 1-4. By the end of the 70s his ballads were garbage and he couldn't write a rocker to save his life by that point. Rod's early 70s run was admittedly impossible to top but AC was when he lost it proper due to a combination of getting older and ultimately having nothing to sing about except being a rock star.
you know this album was gonna be bad when you look at the cover and see his adoption of 70s lounge lizard clothes
>>128219535It's very formulaic but not as bad as some critics make it out to be.
Smiler is decent. Raincoat through Dull Moment are classic. Some of the material outside that is good, he starts to lose it some with Blondes although Tom Dowd still gets a decent sound out of the band. Foolish Behaviour is trash and don't get me started on the torch song albums.
>>128219981i suppose you didn't notice where you can see the outline of his dick through his pants?
>>128220167well we know he's uncut anyway
>>128219763Rod Stewart was a based autist larping as chad. He's now retired peacefully with his train sets.
>>128220183bongs don't do circumcision anyway
