Word: midtempo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Room on Fire reaches its peak with the tender midtempo ballad Under Control. It opens with Moretti's Zeppelin trick, takes off on Hammond's buoyant lead strumming and moves with the melodic sashay of a Bob Marley hit. Over the top of it all is Casablancas, going on about a relationship, of course. He sings, "I don't want to change your mind/I don't want to change the world/I just want to watch it go by." And if the Strokes want to look good doing it? I suppose that's excusable...
Like Music, Madonna's far more buoyant previous album, American Life is evenly split between upbeat techno tunes and midtempo ballads. Most of the techno songs are about the mechanization and superficiality of modern life. The production, by Mirwais Ahmadzai, is predictably stuttering and jumpy. The tracks sound fussed over, but they're also full of surprising grooves and are primed for club play. It's the vocals that could use a remix. Like Laurence Fishburne's oddball Morpheus in The Matrix, Madonna tries to accentuate the plight of humanity by enunciating like a robot. Her mechanical...
lack of melody, the band make nearly every song a midtempo crescendo...
...Gilberto Gil, one of the leaders of the Tropicalia movement in the 1960s and '70s, continued the Beatles theme, playing a moving midtempo rendition of "Something" which became less about romantic love than about the admiration one artist can develop for another's work. Gil also performed a high-spirited, melodious cover of Bob Marley's "Is This Love" finishing with a lusty cry of "Bob Marley!" After Gil's superb set, I wandered over to the Tenda Brasil to take in a performance by Luiz Melodia. He's something of a cult figure/ elder statesman in Brazilian music, effortlessly...
...wrote the hit song You Got Me for the hip-hop group the Roots; and Hidden Beach, the record label putting out Scott's debut album, is partly owned by retired basketball superstar Michael Jordan. Scott's album lives up to the promise of its resume. Her mostly midtempo songs are smoothly entertaining, and her soothing vocals fluently blend soulful croons, jazzy scats and forays into spoken word. Scott's relaxed singing style and the emotional detail in her lyrics make it seem she's not so much performing her songs as she is sharing personal stories with her listeners...