When life is too much - roll with it, baby

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

10/07/88 : Roll With It - Steve Winwood


Our second and a half visit with Steve - once as a solo artist along with half a visit for Traffic, both of which I quite enjoyed. I don't remember this at all though, so I'll be interested to see what I make of it.

Hmmm - this is an interesting one because I was unable to decide how interesting it was. It's all well put together with decent enough songs which are well played but, on first listen at least, it just wasn't that engaging. It's certainly not bland in a Huey Lewis kinda way, but I just didn't care about it - I was like "yay, well done Steve - you did good" in a tolerant parent kinda way, without really caring. I'm interested as to why he's gone for the Terminator T-1000 look on the album cover though...

We're at #10 in the charts this week on his third week of a sixteen week run, with it having peaked at #4 for its first two weeks. The top five this week were Tracy Chapman (riding high after her performance at the Nelson Mandela 70th birthday concert), Kylie (a new entry about to start a 67 week run, with the first 29 weeks in the top ten), Billy Idol, Bros and Barry White (that's quite the collection of artists) and the next highest new entry was Pat Benatar (#11) starting a fourteen week run during which she was in no danger of being visited by us.

Wikipedia tells us this is his fifth solo album and all it really tells us is that the title track did ridiculously well in North America, getting to #1 in US and Canada - but not so well in Europe, getting to #53 in both UK and Germany, He used some hardcore session musicians, some of whom even I've heard of - John Robinson on drums, Mike Lawler on keyboards, The Memphis Horns on brass and Tessa Niles on backing vocals (amusingly Tom Lord-Alge, the engineer, is also credited for his tambourine playing on one track), Critically, the reviews were on the positive side of average but it was nominated for four Grammy Awards, with Tom Lord-Alge winning (but not for his tambourine skills). Commercially, it blew up big time over there in the US, getting to #1 and selling two million copies!

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version for £1.50 or you can pick up a decent version for £40, with no obvious difference between the two of them. I will, however, be picking neither version - I just found this a curiously detached experience.

17/07/88 - Decent enough

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