Trouble In Shangri-La

[aprilsrain]

In anticipation of the new album, I've gone back and started listening to my whole Stevie collection, which started with TOSOTM when someone on this board wrote an excellent analysis of the album, which I'm hoping my post will spur another for this one.

I've found other than the playlist I've had on my iPhone with several of my favorite Stevie songs to begin with, lot of her songs on her albums really suffer from dated 80s production and synthesizers which drown out a lot of very nice songs. This changes with Street Angel, but the album is so flat and muted for the most part, it's a little boring.

At the time TISL came out, I didn't like it at all. I thought it was an odd mash up of current pop production (of which I was a big alt-rock fan at the time so I didn't like) and Sheryl Crow sounding tracks. I was really disappointed when it came out, and shelved the record. This is the only Stevie album I haven't really listened to in its entirety until this week. I also found that her older voice was a little hard to listen to.

10 years later, what I said on the production seems to still be the case, but I don't find it a bad thing. The majority of the songs on this album are stellar and up there with the best of Bella Donna I've found. The fire isn't there in her voice, but she's aged and mature and I don't mind that (I've gotten used to it by this point with SYW and a couple live albums over the last 10 years).

What I don't understand, is why in the middle of the album she has all these songs written by others! The Stevie written songs are by far the strongest on the album, was it a lack of confidence on her part?