By Brett Essler
Last night, I met with Faloon to discuss how we would wrap up our Masochist Supergroup Project. After reading his Chickenfoot blog posts I felt like maybe SuperHeavy wasn't that bad after all (so disgusted was he with Hagar, et. al. that he deleted the files from his hard drive, the 21st Century equivalent of throwing the 8-track in the Goodwill bin). Whatever precious time was lost listening to these records was redeemed by laughing about them over some Neapolitan pies and beer at PizzArte.
If SuperHeavy is a bit of an embarrassment for Sir Mick, no harm done (1). The album sank without much fanfare and will surely be forgotten by the time the Stones reconvene for a 50th anniversary stadium tour later in 2012. But, Jagger could not leave it well enough alone.
As I was editing these blog posts I came across a most disturbing piece of related news: Jagger planned on closing out 2011 by rapping on, and appearing in the video for, will.i.am's "T.H.E. (The Hardest Ever)" which also features Jennifer Lopez. Despite my misgivings, I dialed up the video in the name of due diligence.
With SuperHeavy, I forgave, and almost began to appreciate, the musical transgressions of an over-entitled rock star trying to create music "outside his comfort zone." "T.H.E." on the other hand is Jagger at his pandering worst, making another fruitless attempt at relevancy. Think "State of Shock," but 10x worse.
Next to this, SuperHeavy sounds pretty good. And that is a tall order.
(1) Can't say the same for Dave Stewart, who apparently had the album's Shepard Fairy-designed tiger logo tattooed on his arm! Ouch.
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