Album Review by EDF
Cliff’s umpteenth album has a central theme running through it and luckily this time it’s not a religious concept album. This collection is a selection of tracks that Cliff has written in some form or other. This seems to be aimed at the fans and knowing how fanatic some of them are, they would already have most of these tracks, which makes this collection a bit pointless. Enough of the marketing, are the songs any good?
The first few tracks are typical rock and roll and wimpish ‘60’s tunes. Out of these, it is interesting to note that Cliff wrote the cutesy BACHELOR BOY. After we get past the movie soundtrack tunes, we dive into the ‘70’s. NOTHING TO REMIND ME is one to take note of, if only for the production. When you then come across the B-side to the shameful DEVIL WOMAN, unfortunately not included here, you would expect it to be something special but it disappointingly comes across as a third-rate Bee Gees ballad without the falsetto vocals.
Even when Cliff attempts to rock out on the 1979 ROCK AND ROLL JUVENILE, he manages to sneak in some God and Devil references, the little rascal. Then we are into the ‘80’s complete with that clean production sound that came out of that era. Strangely enough, this actually suits Cliff’s music to the point that his Christian lyrics on tracks such as THE WINNER became even more obvious to those who had not noticed before.
The scary thing is that I can vision this album being well advertised at Christmas time for the over 40’s who do not know the difference between Eminem and M&M’s. This is a bit of a waste of time, really.
