The Story of Silver Springs - The Best Song I've Ever Written

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by jbrownsjr

God, the lucidity of this post really moves me. I feel so much the same way. We are in complete agreement. Especially, the craft part. After Wild Heart, I dreamed of getting more albums that evolved from there. Not de-volved.

That's because she always needed good producers to pull it all together (like Buckingham, like Olsen, like Iovine). But she couldn't handle it when the producers became what she deemed too controlling. Or, alternately, when she felt she couldn't control the process enough. Rock a Little suffered greatly because of her deteriorating voice, but equally so because of the inconsistent production. She couldn't keep a producer around. By the time we get to OSOTM, she was already straying from the sound that made her famous and letting industry trends dictate what she sounded like. Until In Your Dreams, none of her solo albums approached the consistency of the first two.

But then, I'll go out on a limb here: even at its best, her solo work is a bit generic and comparatively uninteresting to her best Mac work. I was never a huge fan of Bella Donna (though I can see why it is huge) and while I loved The Wild Heart at 13, I no longer am bewitched. It's just a pretty good 80s record with a truly distinctive single: "Stand Back," which is, IMO, more original than anything of her solo work before or since.