As we reach the penultimate month of Elemental Music's year of Motown vinyl reissues we receive three rather different records. The earliest of these is one of Motown's courting-the-old-folks discs, although unlike the label's stodgier efforts in this arena, which tended to force The Four Tops or The Supremes to croon show tunes or corny standards, Marvin Gaye's When I'm Alone I Cry is something else entirely. In fact, Gaye had greater ambitions to be the next Nat King Cole than to be the next Smokey Robinson, so his heart was completely in this album. It's a genuine class act, marrying Gaye's classically fine voice with beautiful big band arrangements. This is a record that actually deserved to win over an older audience of discerning listeners. Moody and gorgeous.
"This is a book that's designed to start arguments." That's the way editor Gary Graff begins 501 Essential Albums of the 90s: The Music Fan's Definitive Guide, and really, it's the only way it could begin. Graff knows as well as anyone who has yet to even crack the cover of a book of this sort that there are going to be painful omissions and a fair share of painful inclusions. Even though I've written a book along these lines and know the pitfalls of doing such a thing all too well, I still allowed my teeth to grind at the absence of anything by Grant Lee Buffalo, Suzanne Vega, Throwing Muses, Belly, Juliana Hatfield, Shudder to Think, and quite a few other artists that I feel any guide that calls itself "definitive" can't do without. I also gagged at the inclusions of objectively crappy artifacts from the likes of Brian Adams, Meatloaf, Sponge, Bush, Britney Spears, Korn, and...well...I can really go on and on and on on that account.
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