Tracks
- Cloud Nine
- I Heard It Through the Grapevine
- Runaway Child, Running Wild
- Love is a Hurtin' Thing
- Hey Girl
- Why Did She Have to Leave Me (Why Did She Have to Go)
- I Need Your Lovin'
- Don't Let Him Take Your Love From Me
- I Gotta Find a Way (To Get You Back)
- Gonna Keep On Tryin' till I Win Your Love
Cloud Nine is a surprising album. The musical style doesn't have obvious connections to anything on the 1001 Albums list. A connection to the early and mid '60s soul albums seems the only plausible connection, but even that seems tenuous at best.
The bass guitar has a pulsating and playful sound and is the main driver of the rhythm. The vocals come in short bursts and are accompanied by a bass vocalist on the low end and a falsetto vocalist on the high end. Several of the songs have social commentary in the lyrics. It's not unique, but it's more direct and personal.
This is a good album, but not a great one. The first half of the album is the most interesting part. I tend to lose interest when listening to the second half, but there are some good songs. This album is certainly worth listening to because it presents a new style.
One frustrating thing about this list is that, although the albums are in chronological order by year of release, they aren't necessarily presented in chronological order within the year. So, Cloud Nine is presented before Sly and the Family Stone's Stand!, but Stand! was released before Cloud Nine according to Wikipedia. However, Stand! also had the funky sound, so Sly and the Family Stone may not have been the innovators, but they were ahead of The Temptations. So, there's an attribution problem with the way the albums are ordered. Of course, there's a potential attribution problem because the list is incomplete, but if this list is worth anything, it should be including innovative albums by default.
The songs are decent enough, but the stand outs are Cloud Nine, Runaway Child, Running Wild (although I really hate in the middle where a kid is screaming "I want my mother!"), Love Is a Hurting Thing, I Gotta Find a Way (To Get You Back) and Gonna Keep On Tryin' till I Win Your Love. I would have liked to have include I Heard It Through the Grapevine, but other artists have done a much better job.
★★★★★★★☆☆☆
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