Quote:
Originally Posted by AncientQueen
I hate Country music, and so to me BD is not that good.
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I don't think it's a masterpiece, either, which is what everyone is calling it. Its country side is the "dreadful modern country product" that the critic Albert Goldman was referring to in his writeup on
Rumours in Esquire magazine. In fact, Goldman made the excellent point that
Rumours was a lot more authentically country than the Kenny Rogers-Mac Davis crap that was big on the radio.
Rumours, too, is a lot better at being country (Goldman likened the
Rumours sound to "long-forgotten strains of ancient mountain music from Appalachia") than
Bella Donna is. Even the old Buckingham Nicks demos like
Designs of Love,
You Could Forget, and
Nomad make for more beautiful country than
The Highwayman. Not that
The Highwayman and
After the Glitter Fades aren't nice songs, but Waddy Wachtel's slide guitar and the top-dollar supporting band twang just don't feel very eternal to me.
There's nothing particularly inventive about the way
Bella Donna is arranged or produced, either. We already know most of it was recorded live, and that's what it sounds like. The musicians for hire set up their gear, ran through a couple of takes, and that was that. That's fine, it works all right for what it needs to be, but it wasn't painstakingly crafted the way
Rumours and
Tusk and
Mirage were, where you could dig through the sonics of tracks for days and still not fully comprehend the multilayered complexity and density.
Bella Donna's strength is Stevie herself: her persona, her singing (in his Stereo Review writeup, Steve Simels said she sang like a "no-nonsense country belter like Brenda Lee"), and the way her daffy songwriting is all of a beautiful piece with her daffy personality and mystique. But that doesn't make it a musical masterpiece.