Solo turns that surprised you

Mick Jagger's first solo turn, the She's The Boss album, was a great purchase for me. I loved it. It received mixed reviews as I remember and I think I bought it on the strength of recently having listened to a couple of Rolling Stones albums from the public library (!) Steel Wheels and Undercover. So I took a chance and bought the album by Jagger as I had seen the lead single 'Just Another Night' on MTV or something and liked it. 

He sounds like he's enjoying himself over the nine tracks from the said lead single where his vocals strut along with the 80s uptempo disco-rock groove, to the heart-wrenching ache of the albums's only ballad 'Hard Woman' (surely on a par with the Stones sublimely heartfelt track 'Can Almost Hear You Sigh' on the Steel Wheels album) The mid-tempo rocker 'Lucky In Love' was the follow-up single and didn't do as well as its predecessor but sees Mick in fine vocal form alongside some delicious changes in gear in the song pattern. 

I can't fault any of the tracks really. Even Jagger's spoken dialogue towards the end of the title track (his attempts at American accents are awful but pretty damn funny, as on the spoken interlude on 'Too Much Blood' from the Undercover album) can be forgiven as he obediently keeps his other half on side, comically going "Okay! Okay! I do what you want! Okay! Okay! You're the boss!"

Six of the tracks, including the wonderful Half a Loaf, were penned by Mick himself, with two co-written with Carlos Alomar and one a joint effort with Keith Richards, although Richards does not appear on the album (something about being a tad pissed off that Jagger had thrown himself so quickly into the solo option that new Stones label CBS had offered all members of the band)

The names involved in this album are quite a number, including Jeff Beck, Sly Dunbar, Bernard Edwards (RIP) Pete Townsend, Herbie Hancock, Nile Rodgers, Chuck Leavell, Robbie Shakespeare, Jan Hammer and a host of others. But for all the musicians and technicians involved, this collection of songs doesn't sound like a bloated over-produced madly multi-layered melodrama, you know, they just glide through you from track to track with Jagger's versatile vocals (in turn, smooth, nasally, rasping, heartfelt, funny) at the helm guiding the ship to port with each track.

Lol, I thought you were talking about guitar solos.

Tom Delonge.



Morrissey lol