Tag Archives: music review

Empty Sky (1969) by Elton John (MUS00002) – 🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
September 11 2020

Overview

I was processing some of my digital collection and made it to Elton John. Of all the music Andrea and I have together, our biggest collection of CDs by any one artist or group would be a toss-up between him and The Beatles. Which made me want to start reviewing his whole discography when I realized most of what we have is his stuff once he became more well-known. So I used my Apple Music subscription to go back to the beginning of his first album: Empty Sky.

The available version has nine songs from the original CD release (four on Side One, five on Side Two) and then four more added during a subsequent remastering in 1995/1996.

Songs That I Liked

Critics apparently think Skyline Pigeon is the best song from the ho-hum album and Elton John included it as one of the only songs from the album in subsequent concert tours. I wouldn’t say I love it, not even sure I like it that much, but better than the rest.

Songs That Were Filler

Pretty much the whole album except for one mentioned above that was okay and two more that are not terrible.

Songs That I Didn’t Like

I have to say that any debut album that starts with an eight-minute opening better be amazing, and it really isn’t. If this was the first album I heard, I’d not only not buy it, I’d never buy anything else from the artist either. Apparently, Elton John loved the title track, but who knows what peacenik sound he was going for? I sure don’t. He apparently thought he sounded like Leonard Cohen, but to me it sounds more like CCR via the Troggs, without any pop bounce anywhere in there.

Also, don’t even ask me what Gulliver / It’s Hay-Chewed is…some sort of medley of the rest of the songs? Just plain weird.

List of Songs on the Album

Empty Sky01Empty Sky (8:30)🐸⚪⚪⚪⚪
Empty Sky02Val-Hala (4:12)🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪
Empty Sky03Western Ford Gateway (3:16)🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪
Empty Sky04Hymn 2000 (4:30)🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪
Empty Sky05Lady What’s Tomorrow (3:10)🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪
Empty Sky06Sails (3:46)🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪
Empty Sky07The Scaffold (3:19)🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪
Empty Sky08Skyline Pigeon (3:38)🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
Empty Sky09Gulliver / It’s Hay Chewed (6:59)🐸⚪⚪⚪⚪
Empty Sky10Lady Samantha (3:03)🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪
Empty Sky11All Across the Havens (2:53)🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪
Empty Sky12It’s Me That You Need (4:05)🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪
Empty Sky13Just Like Strange Rain (3:45)🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪

The Bottom Line

His voice is awesome, his songs are not.

Today I choose to edit an old post (TIC00046d)

The PolyBlog
September 6 2020

So my last two posts about choices have been somewhat inter-related. I’m working on a project that I started some 17 years ago. I’m now calling it “A PolyWogg Guide to Music”, just cuz I like naming my projects. And I didn’t want to call it Dave. The intent is that I will look at the Billboard top 100 list each year, as well as some other songs from the year that maybe didn’t make Billboard’s sales lists, and see what I think “endures” past the year. There are lots of songs I listen to from the 1980s or 90s … Continue reading →

A PolyWogg Guide to Music: 1943 – Pop (MUS00001)

The PolyBlog
September 5 2020

I have thought about a series of posts about music hits for a long time. At one point, I was envisioning the idea of “Billboard got it wrong” as the theme, the idea that listing by sales might be a good short-term measure of a hit in the year it is recorded, but ten, twenty, even fifty years later, is it still a song that holds up? Or is there some sort of historical “correction” that I could apply, albeit biased by personal subjectivity, that would be “my view of the musical hits for year x”. A PolyWogg Guide to Music, if you will.

As I started preparing for the project, a topic that interested me as far back as 17 years ago even, I was caught by the most basic question — what year would I start with? While Billboard really got going in the 50s, it had some lists as far back as ’46, and there were some other emerging lists even during the war years. I eventually decided to go with the first real list that I found with a credible methodology based on something resembling sales. That year was 1943.

Continue reading →