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John Legend - Once Again
CD DetailsArtist: John Legend Edition: Music CD CD Release Date: 2006-10-24 Music Label: Sony Soundtracks: - Save Room
- Heaven
- Stereo
- Show Me
- Each Day Gets Better
- P.D.A. (We Just Don't Care)
- Slow Dance
- Again
- Maxine
- Where Did My Baby Go
- Maxine's Interlude
- Another Again
- Coming Home
Music reviews of Once AgainMusic Review: Melo, fun, and engrossing Rating: 5 StarsI went in reverse order with John Legend: I got Get Lifted and Evolver first, but I think this is his best album (I keep going back and forth between this and Evolver, but they have such different feels that it's hard to tell).
Make no mistake about it, this album is his most melo album, which in turn makes it easiest to listen to whenever you're not doing anything at all and just want to hear good music. The awesome tonal qualities of his voice and the piano and guitar in his songs are always perfect matches.
The best songs:
"Save Room" - The has to be his best song ever. It's hard to not fall in love with his music after you hear this song - it's sexy while still having an old school soul and charm feel to it.
"Heaven" - The hook will probably hook you in this song - it's very catch, and his voice definitely shows some dynamic range here.
"Where Did My Baby Go" - Akin to Ordinary People, this is a great piano piece (it has a little bit of accompaniment mid-song) with beautiful lyrics.
"Maxine" - This was a sleeper hit to me. It doesn't start out the way the song ends up sounding, and even on my first listening of this CD it just stuck with me without me realizing it.
"Slow Dance" - This song firmly plants him in soul with its motown-ish old school sampling in the hook.
If you get a chance to hear these songs and you really dig them then chances are good that you're going to really love this album. If you like any of John Legend's more mellow his songs then this song is more than worth the purchase. It's hard for me to not neglect my other CDs when I put in this one.
Description of Once AgainIt takes guts, if not outright egomania, to abandon your given surname and adopt a loaded one like Legend, but the former John Stephens must have sensed that loftiness would one day be his calling card: Once Again, the follow-up to the Grammy-gobbling, platinum pile-on that was Get Lifted, surpasses expectations. Not that it bears much relation to its predecessor. Again again trots out a stable of talented, modern-minded producers--Raphael Saadiq, Legend comrade Kanye West, and the unsinkable will.i.am--but it's nowhere near as self-conscious about embracing the old-school as the knowing, R&B edge-skimming Lifted. Don't expect a derivative mash of smudgy, nostalgia-filching sounds, though, because despite its retro leanings, what's in store somehow crackles with currency. Call it neo-retro if you must, but never call it unimaginative: first single "Save Room" coasts, drifts, and floats along a ponderous path spiked by a cool keyboard-y crescendo; second single "Heaven" busts out a big, busy beat over a slow seduction; and a couple of selections--"Each Day Gets Better" and "PDA"--are so bright and twirly they seem custom-made for dizzy love scenes or jaunty, sunny-day skips through the park. Maybe the most unusual track is "Show Me," a rock song that pilfers elements of Hendrix and finds Legend climbing a few octaves to sound, weirdly, like Jeff Buckley, but it works: so slippery is its beat and so affecting are its hope-laced lyrics that, oddness aside, it's among the disc's best. Sandwiched as it is among 14 songs that all sound like future classics, that's saying something. --Tammy La Gorce More Legendary Music  Get Lifted |  Get Lifted/Live at the House of Blues (CD/DVD) |  Live at the House of Blues (DVD) |
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