PicoBlog

Tracks: 1) Emotions; 2) Just Another Lie; 3) If You Love Me (Really Love Me); 4) Crazy Talk; 5) When I Fall In Love; 6) Around The World; 7) Swanee River Rock; 8) Will You Love Me Tomorrow; 9) I’m Learning About Love; 10) Georgia On My Mind; 11) Cry; 12) I’m In The Mood For Love.

REVIEW

The tracklist of Emotions was compiled, this time around, from seven different sessions, but most of them took place within a short period of time (end of 1960 up to January ’61) and largely with the same personnel. Some of the songs are simply outtakes from This Is... Brenda!, and the album as a whole follows the same pattern — a mix of one or two contemporary big hits, a bunch of Tin Pan Alley oldies, a couple of nice pop-rock numbers specially written for the artist, and some homages to Brenda’s idols like Ray Charles and Fats Domino. It’s a formula that worked well enough on the previous LP, and it remains decent enough for Emotions — a solid pop album with quite a backbone, once again proving that Nashville was arguably the single best place for an American artist to record pop music in the early 1960s: at the very least, you could count on being backed with top-notch session musicians rather than sacchariney string orchestras.

The big hit was ‘Emotions’, coincidentally recorded on the exact same day as ‘I Want To Be Wanted’. The song, written by professional songwriter Ramsey Kearney, had originally been a rather generic country hit for Carl Smith; in his rendition, it feels like a watered-down Hank Williams tune. A couple of years later, Mel Tillis completely rearranged the song, amended a lot of the lyrics, and pitched it to Brenda in the form of a doo-wop ballad. It’s a little less nuanced than ‘I Want To Be Wanted’, but it’s reasonably catchy and the vocal delivery fully lives up to the standards of ‘I’m Sorry’. One might grumble that Brenda is too obsessed with showing her vocal power to properly nail the «emotional» side of this painful breakup anthem, but give her a break — she was only 16 and if you’ve got that kind of vocal power when you’re 16, what will it take to put an intentional leash on it? Besides, there’s plenty of believable desperation at the finish line of "emotions, please leave me alone!" — far more than in the average performance of the average 21st century «pop diva».

Unfortunately, the problem with her powerful 16-year old voice still remains whenever she tries to tackle a giant. There are at least two covers here that are far more than Brenda Lee can properly chew — one, of Edith Piaf’s ‘Hymne A L’Amour’ (‘If You Love Me’ in English translation), and two, of Ray Charles’ ‘Georgia On My Mind’. There’s nothing cringeworthy about either: the passion is real, and the technical side is without reproach. But Piaf has unique character, and Ray has unique soulful depth; Brenda Lee has neither, and both covers come off as gimmicks — «can a 16-year old girl really sing such mature masterpieces and not fall flat on her face?» — well, no, she does not fall flat, but neither is she capable of giving her own interpretation of the source material. She certainly sounds far more natural and believable on ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’, though, again, in between the original version by the Shirelles and the later «native» version by Carole King herself, it is hardly likely that people will be frequently returning to Brenda Lee for that question.

So let’s just skip all the classic covers and all the Tin Pan Alley re-runs and pay a little attention to the fresh or the little-known material. ‘Just Another Lie’ was originally recorded in 1958 by country singer Linda Brannon in a minimalistic guitar-based arrangement, but here is reinvented as an R&B number, melodically reminiscent of Chuck Willis’ ‘What Am I Living For?’, and features one of the best arrangements on the entire album — a funny, fuddy-duddy guitar rhythm, tasteful piano fills from Floyd Cramer, Boots Randolph’s sax runs, and a moody, quasi-Stephane Grappelli violin part deep in the background. Oh, and a fairly quiet, but piercing performance from Brenda herself, of course.

Still, my favorite two numbers on the record are the fastest, chirpiest, and most energetic ones — ‘Crazy Talk’ and ‘I’m Learning About Love’ are both unabashed, simplistic teen-pop anthems that, hard as it might be to admit, at this point sit much more naturally with Brenda Lee than her attempts to fill the boots of Piaf or Ray Charles. Both sound very much like contemporary Elvis pop material (no wonder, as they are essentially recorded by Elvis’ own musical team), and both are delicious: ‘Crazy Talk’ has Brenda and Boots Randolph «babbling» against each other to express the art of being tongue-tied next to one’s love interest, and ‘I’m Learning About Love’, for once, brings back the «Miss Dynamite» snappy growl, mostly forsaken on the album for the sakes of «maturity», but resurrected for this little teenybopper anthem, catchy, sexy, and fun. Too bad there’s so little of this kind of material on the album.

Overall, Emotions continues to suffer from (or maybe benefit from?) a split personality syndrome — there’s a very clear, very intentional effort on Brenda’s part to come across as «deep» and «mature», while at the same time she still ends up sounding more natural and convincing whenever she sings something «shallow» and «immature». There is not a single song on the record that I would be unable to enjoy; and yet, at the same time, it cannot help but reek a little of exploitation (perhaps self-exploitation, because I have no evidence of anybody forcing those Ray Charles covers down Brenda’s throat), which ultimately explains why Brenda Lee’s popularity waned so quickly once she came out of age — not because of the British Invasion or anything, but simply because Brenda Lee singing «serious songs» at the age of 21 no longer interested anybody who’d already heard her singing all those songs at the age of 16.

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