She's The Boss - Mick Jagger > Reviews > Stones singer in above-par solo album shock!

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Average
Lyrics	Standard
Quality and consistency of tracks	A couple of weak links
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Not applicable
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	Better than could be expected
Disadvantages:	Sounding rather dated now

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Ohmygawd a solo album. Not just any old solo album either, a Mick Jagger solo album nonetheless. Just the mention of the words "Solo Album" usually sends a shiver down my spine, as memories of all four members of Kiss bringing out an LP at the same time come back to haunt me. By their very nature they're usually little more than a vanity project where the band's guitarist tries to convince us he really can sing and the drummer gets his hands on any instrument the session players are careless enough to take their eye off for five minutes.

The elastic voiced and bodied one released this in early 1985, at a time when the Stones were in something of a transient period. Keef was reportedly not best pleased, thinking his singer should be putting energy into their band instead; his mood probably not cheered with the inclusion here of an updated version of an outtake from their "Emotional Rescue" LP (Lonely At The Top, co-written by a certain Mr K Richards).

Even taking into account this was the 1980's and thus hang the expense, this album has thirty six different people playing on it. Thirty six! Ranging from session players like Tony Thompson (Chic, Power Station), Lenny Pickett, Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare (Sly and Robbie of many a reggae album) to soloist themselves like Nile Rogers, Herbie Hancock and Pete Townsend, needless to say this cast of thousands know their way round a recording studio blindfolded and give us a polished, professional LP but are the songs actually worth listening to? Or should CBS have said "sorry Mick we'll have to shelve it, because we got this new band called Night Ranger and they got some hot licks?"

Well for a start forget about Stonesyish R&B rock and roll, although leaning towards heavier sounds the use here - typical for its time - of drum machines and synths give a more glossy AOR feel to the songs, with the exception of two cuts Turn The Girl Loose and Running Out Of Luck, both spacier sounding and using heavy synth percussion to fill out the sparser production. We have a big ballad, Hard Woman, where Mick gets to lay down an impassioned if sometimes comic vocal "she's a hard wooooman to purleeeeze" and bog-standard but well played up-front numbers Lucky In Love and Secrets.

The hit single taken was Just Another Night, built around a four note riff where the theme is woman please give me just one more chance, I'm in a posh hotel alone but I'd rather be there with you, which ends with scratchy guitar. A similar theme of "we might not have much but it's better than nothing" carries on in Half A Loaf, where the chorus is sung by what sounds like the entire staff of the recording studio. Far and away the best track is the last one, the title number, a hilarious tale of the sweet little woman who ends up domineering. "When I first met you, you looked so soft, so feminine, you looked so lost, what a fool I was - yeah". She's the boss in the office, she's the boss in the kitchen, she's the boss in bed, she's the boss in my head, she's the boss. The bit at the end where Mick scat sings "what's that...you want it right now?....but I got a headache...OK OK I'll do what you say" never fails to make me crease up.

So despite it all - the excess (Jagger is one of four producers), what must have been a huge cost to make it, even the dated sound - this is still a good laugh especially the title track and certainly worth hearing again, perhaps for the more, erm, "mature" audience (good god I must be getting old). Not really worth 4 stars though; more like 3 and 3/4. Pick it up for around a fiver, which is about as much as I first paid for the vinyl copy all those years ago.