Smile At You... philosophical question

[David]

Originally Posted by louielouie2000

So the question is, does everything think they might have enjoyed Smile At You had you not heard the old demos first? Or do you still hold by your opinions that the song just isn't very good?

The song itself is an excellent lyric, but this treatment of it is trashy, like the B side of a one-hit-wonder band from the late '80s. The lead vocal is boring & unpleasant to my ears: it's an overtly trebly electronic sound that isn't flattering to Stevie's natural nasality at all. It's too flangey or phased or something.

Even if I had never heard the two earlier renditions of it with Fleetwood Mac, I'd still not like this one. People throw around the phrase "overproduced" a lot, sometimes without knowing what it actually means, but this track is undeniably overproduced. It's like a Rob Cohen movie treatment, but beyond amped-up kinesis into enervated, artificial exhaustion. Everything that was bad about the Tango in the Night album has been used here, but nothing that was good. The whole thing sounds as if it came directly from the demo function on the old Yamaha DX-7.