CD: Cliff Richard - Soulicious | reviews, news & interviews
CD: Cliff Richard - Soulicious
CD: Cliff Richard - Soulicious
Hard as he tries, Sir Cliff can't connect with soul music's raw, bleeding heart
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With Cliff Richard it’s tempting for commentators and critics to pull a conceptual double bluff. Cliff is regarded as naff, safe and beloved of grannies, so restating that angle and sneering is tired - it was tired 40 years ago. So what to do? Dig around his back catalogue for a corner to be fought? (I’m Nearly Famous and Wired for Sound are the usual contenders.) Make the valid case that he was the British stepping stone between rock’n’roll and The Beatles?
It doesn’t wash, any of it. Cliff and the Shadows' early work may have been vital when Conway Twitty was king but today it sounds anaemic. Compare it to, say, Jerry Lee Lewis and it’s a hairdryer beside a Pontiac. Fifty years later Sir Cliff is duetting in Memphis with a who’s-who of black music – Percy Sledge, Candi Staton, Freda Payne and so on - and it’s still tepid. The songs are mostly original - which is admirable - composed by Lamont Dozier, Ashford & Simpson and others, but Cliff removes all meat, grit and feeling, singing like a karaoke George Michael with a mouthful of marbles, while tasteful strings and power-ballad guitars schmaltz about behind him.
There are moments when he raises his game, as on the falsetto groover “Every Piece of My Broken Heart” and the brassy froth of the Womack & Womack classic “Teardrops” but, from the twee barber-shop moves of “Are You Feeling Me” to rock-funk closer “Birds of a Feather”, it’s all so horribly controlled and antiseptic, as if sex didn’t exist. On which point, on “When I Was Your Baby” (with Roberta Flack) he does some weird panting thing, possibly intended as erotic but which made me feel in need of a good scrub.
This isn’t autopilot Cliff - he could just turn out the same MOR dross and his fans wouldn’t mind. He’s trying something, experimenting, but the results are as earthy and sensual as Tupperware - which is surely not very soulicious?
Watch Cliff Richard and Freda Payne perform "Saving a Life"
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Comments
And what are Conway Twitty
I agree with comments her
Disgusting review. Totally
What a horrible man you are
Did someone kick you out of
What YOU -yeah, you who wrote
I am a big Cliff fan and will
Firstly may I say rather
Cliff has always been a multi
Did you listen carefully to
Hi there Mr Green!... a bit
When you first read a
Funny - the only character
Well Janis, just as respected
I don't think character
@Baz to answer your question
Yes Ian, those albums aren't
Well Baz yet again facts seem
I'm glad most comments shoot
Here, here!! The concert was
Hey, Mr Green what's it like
An album making the Top 10
So Thomas H Green does exist
Nowt so blind to any hint of
I checked out some of Cliff's
I guess if Cliff Richard