RSSBilled as a simple follow-up, Come On Over is in fact a far perkier and jokier album, a full hour of uptempo tunes, many with highly uncountry keyboard hooks. Authentic it ain't; enticing it is. Feisty and ready for fun, Twain occasionally sounds willing to separate sex from romance, which is always a good way for a woman to gain male admirers. Yet she never seems like a pushover--an essential touch if she wants to keep them.
Out of the depths of a classily packaged but mostly redundant reisses series comes Essential Blondie: Picture This Live (EMI/Capitol), the first live album in the classic new wavers' catalogue, and proof that they were nowhere near as slick as their handlers wanted everyone to think.
It's sort of amazing that there aren't more down-to-earth hip hop albums like Common's sane but hardly complacent One Day It'll All Make Sense (Relativity). Then again, given the crassness of the market, maybe it's amazing that there's even one--and that it will actually move some units. Jaw-dropper: Retrospect for Life, an exploration of abortion in all its emotional complexity featuring Fugee Lauryn Hill.
Playboy, Jan. 1998
 |
Dec. 1997 | Feb. 1998 |  |