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Originally Posted by bwboy
Thank you, Macfan4life, for summarizing the interview. I just don’t have the interest to listen to her interviews, but I enjoy learning new to things about songs or albums, so your summation is helpful!
I agree that half of TOSOTM is great- fantastic, even; but the other half is bland or forgettable. That’s why I like RAL more- there are plenty of songs I skip on TOSOTM, but not on RAL, because even the weirder songs, like Sister Honey or the Nightmare, are listenable. Juliet and Whole Lotta Trouble not so much.
Rooms on Fire is a really good, strong song. I think it was underrated when it first came out. It’s a song that I think only Stevie could really do justice to. I’m stunned she said she liked what Rupert Hine did with Doing the Best I Can for two reasons; some of it is incredibly over the top, such as the piano right before the words “I was silent, I was locked away.” Second, if she liked the song so much, why didn’t she ever perform it live?” It amazes me that for her tour, she chose to perform Whole Lotta Trouble, Juliet, and Alice, but not Long Way to Go, Ooh My Love, or Doing the Best I Can. Even for her current tour, she should have chosen Doing the Best over I Sing For the Things. Maybe Doing the Best still hits to close to home for her, even now.
Cben, I wanted to add that while Stevie’s initial claim that she needed a solo career in order to release more material might have been more legit early on, remember that after Mirage, no one in FM was really clamoring for a reunion, so at that point, I could still understand her desire to continue her solo career.
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I think Rupert did an excellent job on Doing The Best That I can. Its not really a pop song and is basically a poem about her dreaded escape from rehab. The song is almost hypnotic and entrancing. He hit the nail on the head with developing the proper mood of the song. I love that she performed it live once at a piano. I think she played it on the piano for Rupert when they first met. There is an audio of her and Sharon singing it and practicing it for the Street Angel tour. But just like Ooh My Love, she practiced it but never performed it.
My favorite songs from the album are:
Rooms on Fire
Long Way To Go - the way she weaves dumping a guy and being addicted to drugs together in this song is nothing short of fantastic. This is one of my all time favorites
Ghosts - autobiographical and haunting.
Ooh My Love - her band nailed this one. Could have been a single
Doing The Best That I can - brilliant
Fire Burning, Alice, and Juliet, Whole Lotta Trouble are meh
Ok here it goes ***bracing myself **** I like Two Kinds Of Love. Its Stevie's sexual song about lust. Very autobiographical staying up all night for days at parties. I suppose its about Joe too.
Cry Wolf and I still miss someone as covers was not needed. Was her catalog this weak that she needed to be brought songs to sing like RAL? I would have loved to have heard what Rupert could have done with Planets of the Universe.
I will say of all the Stevie demos I have heard, the demos from the OSOTM sessions are the worst ever. Songs like Dial The Number make you want to throw yourself out a window they are that bad. Considering what he had to work with, I think the album turned out fine. Its a very personal and open album. I think her tranquilized self let her reveal so much about herself in literal terms. OSOTM is better than Street Angel, or TISRL or anything else she released as solo album since. Another thing she said this interview that did not happen was adding a second guitar on her 1989 tour. She was already practicing with several musicians to go on the road.