Friday, January 31, 1992

Asia returned with Aqua

Aqua

Asia


Released: January 1992


Peak: -- US, -- UK, -- CN, -- AU


Sales (in millions): -- US, -- UK, -- world (includes US and UK)


Genre: rock


Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.)

  1. Aqua, Pt. 1
  2. Who Will Stop the Rain? (8/92, --)
  3. Back in Town
  4. Love Under Fire
  5. Someday
  6. Little Rich Boy
  7. The Voice of Reason
  8. Lay Down Your Arms
  9. Crime of the Heart
  10. A Far Cry
  11. Don’t Call Me
  12. Heaven on Earth
  13. Aqua, Pt. 2


The Players:

  • Geoff Downes (keyboards)
  • Steve Howe (guitar – guest appearance only)
  • Carl Palmer (drums)
  • John Payne (vocals/ bass)
  • Al Pitrelli (guitar)

Rating:

2.810 out of 5.00 (average of 12 ratings)

About the Album:

When Asia forged a new pop-meets-prog-rock format in 1982 with their self-titled debut, detractors had plenty to complain about. How could a supergroup with the pedigrees the likes of Steve Howe, Carl Palmer, John Wetton, and Geoff Downes reduce themselves to such simple music? The record-buying public, however, lapped it up, making it Billboard magazine’s album of the year.

After a top-ten platinum follow-up, Asia quickly fell off the radar. By 1985’s Astra, guitarist Steve Howe had left the band. Wetton would leave soon after the album’s release. Nothing much was heard of the band for another five years, when a tour (with Pat Thrall replacing Howe) and a greatest-hits package would garner the band a bit of attention, enough attention, in fact, to warrant the band’s return to the studio for a full-fledged release.

Well, not exactly the same band. 1992’s “Aqua found the band infused with new energy, represented by a younger generation of arena rockers in bassist/ vocalist John Payne and guitarist Al Pitrelli,” AMG “who had recently worked with Alice Cooper.” AMG “Although Payne doesn’t invite comparison to John Wetton or Greg Lake (his voice tends to get rougher as it gets louder), he gets the job done and turns out to be a pretty good songwriter.” AMG

As for guitar, Steve Howe guests on the album, but most of the guitar work fell to Pitrelli. He “knows his rock guitar; he’s no replacement for Steve Howe, but he doesn’t have to be.” AMG

“Geoff Downes (who continues to write much of the material) keeps the music punchy and professional; gone are the dated synthesizers of the ‘80s, replaced by cutting-edge keyboards and savvy production. The opening and closing instrumentals, Aqua I and Aqua II, show just how far Downes had come since Astra.” AMG

“The rest of the songs are pretty much of a piece; written with outside collaborators in many cases, they tend to be either moody ballads or hard-driving numbers about love and war (some things never change). Who Will Stop the Rain? was chosen as the single; it didn’t chart…but it’s as good a track as you’ll find here.” AMG That song and the equally punchy Lay Down Your Arms should have found homes at album-oriented rock stations.

Heaven on Earth “apparently tested as the second single, is another standout track, shifting from a ballad to an all-out rocker that sounds like Yes’ music from the ‘90s. Someday and The Voice of Reason are other tracks that represent the album well.” AMG

Still, there is some difference of opinion about how well the album should be regarded. According to critics ratings gathered by the DMDB, this is the most critically panned album of Asia’s career; note the 2 ½ star rating. On the flip side, All Music Guide’s Dave Connolly sees says the album “avoids sounding sappy or self-pitying, two adjectives that would describe Alpha or Astra.” AMG He goes so far as to say that “Asia finally produced a suitable follow-up to their first album.” AMG The DMDB respectfully disagrees. After jettisoning John Wetton, pulling only guest appearances from Steve Howe, and relegating drummer Carl Palmer to pretty much the role of session musician, you can’t possibly have an album the compares to its three predecessors.

Regardless of critical acclaim or lack thereof, “after ten years and two label changes…few fans remained in the seats to hear” AMG Aqua. The irony is that the “amalgam of arena rock and hair metal” AMG might have found more of an audience if marketed as a new band instead of the has-been Asia.


Notes: The song “Obsession” was added to later editions as a bonus track.

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First posted 4/19/2008; updated 8/6/2021.

Saturday, January 18, 1992

Nirvana “Come As You Are” charted

Come As You Are

Nirvana

Writer(s): Kurt Cobain (see lyrics here)


Released: March 2, 1992


First Charted: January 18, 1992


Peak: 32 US, 19 CB, 21 GR, 20 RR, 3 AR, 3 MR, 9 UK, 27 CN, 25 AU, 9 DF (Click for codes to charts.)


Sales (in millions): -- US, 1.2 UK, 1.88 world (includes US + UK)


Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 589.5 video, 1029.64 streaming

Awards:

Click on award for more details.

About the Song:

Nirvana exploded with their grunge anthem “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the lead single from their 1991 sophomore album Nevermind. “Come As You Are” was released as the second single and while it couldn’t hope to replicate its predecessor’s iconic status, it became a top-3 hit on the Billboard mainstream rock and alternative rock charts and reached the top 40 on the pop charts. In 2019, Nielsen Music reported it was mainstream rock’s third most-played song of the decade. WK

There was some debate about what to release as the second single. Nirvana’s frontman, Kurt Cobain, was concerned about the similarities between “Come As You Are” and a song from 1984 called “Eighties” by Killing Joke. He preferred “In Bloom” but the record company won out, feeling like “Come As You Are” had more commercial potential. WK Killing Joke did, in fact, complain that the main guitar riff plagiarized their song, but didn’t file a copyright infringement lawsuit. WK The group reportedly decided not to sue after Cobain died. SF It has also been noted that the song has similarities to “Life Goes On” by the Damned, which predated “Eighties.” WK

Cobain said the song was about “people and what they’re expected to act like” WK but there was speculation that it was about heroin, with which Cobain struggled. The lyrics “come doused in mud, soaked in bleach” referenced an HIV prevention campaign in Seattle where addicts were told that if their needles were doused in mud then they should be sterilized by being soaked in bleach. WK

One of the frequent lines in the song is “I don’t have a gun.” It became eerily prescient of Cobain committing suicide in 1994 with a gunshot to the head. Mark Deming of AllMusic.com suggests that in the song the line was Cobain’s way of declaring that he was unarmed, “it’s an attempt to reassure listeners that…his target is the world at large rather than the individuals in it, and that there was still room in this damaged world for everyone.” AMG


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First posted 7/21/2023.

Monday, January 6, 1992

Tori Amos released Little Earthquakes

Little Earthquakes

Tori Amos


Released: January 6, 1992


Peak: 54 US, 14 UK, 49 CN, 14 AU


Sales (in millions): 2.0 US, 0.1 UK, 2.26 world (includes US and UK)


Genre: adult alternative singer/songwriter


Spotify Podcast:
Check out the Dave’s Music Database podcast Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes: The 30th Anniversary based on this list. It debuts January 4, 2022, at 7pm CST. Tune in every Tuesday at 7pm for a new episode based on the lists at Dave’s Music Database.

Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.)

  1. Crucify [4:58] (5/12/92, 52 CB, 22 MR, 15 UK, 73 CN, 83 AU)
  2. Girl [4:06]
  3. Silent All These Years [4:10] (10/21/91, 65 US, 26 A40, 26 UK, 27 AR)
  4. Precious Things [4:26]
  5. Winter [5:40] (3/9/92, 25 UK, 49 AU)
  6. Happy Phantom [3:12]
  7. China [4:58] (1/20/92, 51 UK)
  8. Leather [3:12]
  9. Mother [6:59]
  10. Tear in Your Hand [4:38]
  11. Me and a Gun [3:44] (10/21/91, --)
  12. Little Earthquakes [6:51]

2015 Deluxe Edition bonus disc:

  1. Upside Down [4:22] (10/21/91, B-side of “Me and a Gun”)
  2. Thoughts [2:36] (10/21/91, B-side of “Me and a Gun”)
  3. Ode to the Banana King (Part One) [4:06] (8/22/92, “Silent All These Years” UK EP)
  4. Song for Eric [1:50] (8/22/92, “Silent All These Years” UK EP)
  5. The Pool [2:51] (3/9/92, B-side of “Winter”)
  6. Take to the Sky [4:20] (3/9/92, B-side of “Winter”)
  7. Sweet Dreams [3:27] (3/9/92, B-side of “Winter”)
  8. Mary [4:27] (6/8/92, “Crucify” UK EP)
  9. Sugar [4:27] (1/20/92, B-side of “China”)
  10. Flying Dutchman [6:31] (1/20/92, B-side of “China”)
  11. Humpty Dumpty [2:52] (1/20/92, B-side of “China”)
  12. Smells Like Teen Spirit (Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic) [3:17] (5/12/92, B-side of “Crucify”)
  13. Little Earthquakes (live) [6:58] *
  14. Crucify (live) [5:19] *
  15. Precious Things (live) [5:03] *
  16. Mother (live) [6:37] *
  17. Happy Phantom (live) [3:33] *
  18. Here in My Head [3:53] (6/8/92, “Crucify” UK EP)

All songs written by Tori Amos unless noted otherwise. Live cuts (marked with *) on bonus disc were recorded on April 5, 1992, at the Cambridge Corn Exchange.


Total Running Time: 57:11

Rating:

4.477 out of 5.00 (average of 13 ratings)


Quotable: “The most accessible work in Amos’ catalog…also the most influential and rewarding.” – Steve Huey, All Music Guide


Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album:

As the cover art for Little Earthquakes “evocatively illustrated, [Tori] Amos would never be an artist who could be pigeonholed, stereotyped or walled in in any way. She proudly flaunted the many conflicting sides of her artistic persona, leaving listeners to sort out what it all means.” JD

“With her haunting solo debut…Amos carved the template for the female singer/songwriter movement of the ‘90s.” AMG As both a classically trained pianist and a singer with “the attitude of an alternative rocker,” JD she was “a sometimes spacey, new-age chanteuse with a flair for cynical satire, and a raging punk who could also play the flighty faerie princess.” JD Her “delicate, prog rock piano work and confessional, poetically quirky lyrics invited close emotional connection.” AMG

“Similarly minimalist singer-songwriter, adult-alternative fare” JD from “Tracy Chapman, Melissa Etheridge, Sarah McLachlan, k.d. lang, SinĂ©ad O'Connor, and the Indigo Girls had already begun to reach the same flock, but Amos—by virtue of her sexual intensity and subject matter—instantly commanded a bond only rivaled by Madonna.” PF The “intimacy is uncompromising, intense, and often far from comforting” AMG as “Amos tackles hot-button topics such as gender stereotyping, religious conservatism, male hegemony and rape.” JD Her “musings…were just as likely to encompass rage, sarcasm, and defiant independence as pain or tenderness” AMG and she did so “in a frank, unflinching, and alternately poignant and heartbreakingly funny manner;” JD “sometimes, it all happened in the same song.” AMG

Background:
Myra Ellen Amos “grew up in Baltimore, the outspoken daughter of a Scottish Methodist preacher and a mother who was part Cherokee.” JD She was entranced with music early on, becoming the youngest-ever student – at age 5 – to enroll at Johns Hopkins’ University’s Peabody Institute. By 13, she was performing at piano bars in Washington, D.C. In 1988, her “Pat Benatar-esque” PF “leather-and-metal project called Y Kant Tori Read” (which included future Guns N’ Roses’ drummer Matt Sorum) “instantly flopped.” PF The cover represented her as “a sword-wielding, flame-haired metal vixen.” PF As she said, “I had come from child prodigy to vapid bimbo.” RS

She moved to England in 1990 and, inspired by “heroines ranging from Kate Bush to Patti Smith” JD started writing “confessional, piano-driven tracks exploring the complexities of finding one’s voices and throwing off the shackles of religion.” RS Producer and then-boyfriend Eric Rosse worked with Amos to keep “the sound spare but tuneful, mostly focusing on her fluid piano playing and soaring vocals. Like Leonard Cohen before her, she proved that these two simple sonic elements can pack as powerful a wallop as Nirvana’s crushing guitar, bass and drums.” JD Little Earthquakes, in fact, was released when Nirvana’s Nevermind was atop the charts and, although “it was rarely talked about this way, was similarly radical – an alternately flirty and harrowing work that juxtaposed barbed truths against symphonic flights of fancy.” PF

1990 Demo Tape:
In December 1990, Amos submitted a 10-track demo tape to Atlantic Records. They rejected it, although “Crucify,” “Happy Phantom,” “Leather,” and “Winter” would eventually end up on Little Earthquakes. “Take to the Sky (aka “Russia”), “Mary,” Sweet Dreams,” “Song for Eric,” and “Flying Dutchman” would get released as B-sides on singles in support of Little Earthquakes in 1991 and 1992. That album also included the unreleased song “Learn to Fly.” The video below was assembled by a fan to approximate that 1990 demo tape.

Amos says she was asked to write and record a new track. She said, “No. I’ll do four. I can’t do one because there’s too much pressure for that one to be it.” RS She pulled in Eric Rosse, her then-boyfriend, as a co-producer. She said, “We’re sort of like spiritual brother and sister.” RS They developed the songs “Girl,” “Precious Things,” “Tear in Your Hand,” “Mother,” and “Little Earthquakes,” which would all end up on the Little Earthquakes album. She also recorded “Take Me with You,” which was released in 2006 with re-recorded vocals.

“Me and a Gun”
The eventual Little Earthquakes album was preceded by “the harrowing ‘Me and a Gun,’” AMG a single which set the stage for the unconventional and bold style Amos would apply throughout her career. She opted for a completely a capella performance on “the album’s most striking track, and the one most indicative of the artist's honest-at-all-costs approach.” JD Amos “confronts the listener with the story of her own real-life rape; the free-associative lyrics come off as a heart-wrenching attempt to block out the ordeal.” AMG

“Silent All These Years”
The single for “Me and a Gun” included non-album cuts “Upside Down” and “Thoughts” as well as the album cut “Silent All These Years.” After BBC Radio One in the UK named the latter the “Song of the Week” it was released on its own as a single. She told Rolling Stone that after the failure of Y Kant Tori Read, “I’m only in my twenties and it’s over.” RS However, she was inspired by reading Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid to her niece. It resonated with Amos that the main character loses her voice and Amos wrote “Silent All These Years” about reclaiming her own voice.

The song was a minor hit, reaching #26 in the UK and only #65 in the U.S., but it would become the song that launched Tori Amos’ career. “Yet even in the singer’s most accessible song, idiosyncrasies abound: From intro to opening verse, the tempo slows drastically, and remains irregular. Her right hand on the piano doesn’t always sync with what her left is doing and often accentuates different beats, while her lyric references Satan and menstruation.” PF

“China”
The next single was “China.” Of the song, Amos told Rolling Stone “there’s been a side to me that’s always been drawn to heart-wrenching love songs. And sometimes I find that you don’t get those necessarily in the contemporary singer-songwriter world, but also with musical theater, Gershwin, classics. I think that ‘China’ probably came after a big bout of listening to Barbra Streisand. Because you know, if anyone can break your heart, she could.” RS

“Winter”
The album’s fourth single was “Winter.” She told Rolling Stone that the song was about “roads that you thought you would go down and haven’t experienced, and all these potential experiences are gone now. Those doors are closed.” RS She talked about teenagers losing their imaginations and “they don’t know how to get back anymore because in trying to become an adult you feel like you have to circumcise the magical world.” RS

The single release included non-album cuts “Take to the Sky” and “Sweet Dreams” as B-sides.

“Mother”
Amos says that “Winter” represented her father and grandfather – “the positive male energies in my life.” RS To tap the other side, she wrote ‘Mother’ about the idea that “God is not just male, but of the Creator being female and male. So this is the feminine story coming down to earth, leaving this soul space and saying goodbye to Mother Creator as I go to Mother Earth.” RS

“Crucify”
The album’s fifth and final single, “Crucify,” “is a brutal look in the mirror of self-examination (‘Every finger in the room is pointing at me/I wanna spit in their faces.../Why do we crucify ourselves/Every day I crucify myself’).” JD Once again, Amos released a single which included non-album material – in this case, three cover songs. In addition to offering up her renditions of the Rolling Stones’ “Angie” and Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You,” she boldly tackled Nirvana “with her own striking cover of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ which none other than Kurt Cobain hailed for its creative reimagining of his song).” JD

“Girl” and “Leather”
“’Girl’ chronicles the never-ending search for a strong feminine identity” JD while in Leather Amos follows Madonna’s lead by putting “earthly passions on display not necessarily to seduce her congregation, but to empower herself—and, by extension—her fans.” PF Amos said she was stopped by someone once who said “I teach pole dancing classes to your music.” RS

“Precious Things”
This was one of the songs Amos wrote after Atlantic Records rejected her 1990 demo. She came up with the riff for “Precious Things” while on vacation in the Rocky Mountains. She said she wasn’t even near a piano, but the song started building in her head. She said it was about “these core parts of the self…getting discovered. I was seeing what my structure was made of.” RS

“Tear in Your Hand”
This is a nostalgic look at what Tori explains is that age when “you’re not so far away from leaving your parents’ house to have your own life, separate from all those people you went to high school with.” RS

“Happy Phantom”
Regarding Happy Phantom, Amos said, “To talk about death was really important on Little Earthquakes because there was a part of me had to die. The image that I had created for whatever reason, had to die.” RS

“Little Earthquakes”
Finally, the title cut grew out of Amos’ reflection on, she says, “the kinds of people that I wanted in my life” and being with “somebody else who I could give what they needed. This was a real turning point in claiming what kind of life I wanted to live.” RS

Conclusion
“Amos draws strength from her relentless vulnerability” AMG and “the constantly shifting emotions of the material never seem illogical – Amos simply delights in the frankness of her own responses, whatever they might be.” AMG “Like a great, soulful blues artist, Amos finds catharsis from personal pain in her music. But like the best rock ‘n’ rollers (Cobain among them), she entertains, inspires and energizes while she’s doing it. And the impact of her songs is indeed like the ‘little earthquakes’ referenced in the title.” JD

“Though her subsequent albums were often very strong, Amos would never bare her soul quite so directly (or comprehensibly) as she did here, nor with such consistently focused results. Little Earthquakes is the most accessible work in Amos’ catalog, and it’s also the most influential and rewarding.” AMG


Notes: The 2015 deluxe edition added a second disc with eighteen B-sides and live cuts. It includes all of the B-sides from singles released in support of Little Earthquakes from 1991 to 1992 with two exceptions. While “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” from the Crucify UK EP is included here, the other two cuts – covers of the Rolling Stones’ “Angie” and Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You” are not here.

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Other Related DMDB Pages:


First posted 2/13/2008; last updated 6/3/2022.

Saturday, January 4, 1992

U2 charted with “One”

One

U2

Writer(s): Bono/U2 (see lyrics here)


Released: February 24, 1992


First Charted: January 4, 1992


Peak: 10 US, 3 CB, 12 GR, 2 RR, 24 AC, 12 AR, 11 MR, 7 UK, 14 CN, 4 AU, 1 DF (Click for codes to charts.)


Sales (in millions): -- US, 0.2 UK, 0.36 world (includes US + UK)


Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 86.0 video, 459.23 streaming

Awards:

Click on award for more details.

About the Song:

Inspired by the fall of the Berlin wall, U2 went to Germany to record their album Achtung Baby and “cast off their trad-rock shoes and restyled themselves as post-modern, electro-tinged experimentalists.” TB It has been speculated that the song “One” is about the reunification of the country SF while it is also theorized that the song is about the reunification of the group itself. They bickered over the direction over their sound and even broke up temporarily before achieving a breakthrough with “One.” WK The Edge, the band’s guitarist, said, “It was a pivotal song in the recording of the album, the first breakthrough in what was an extremely difficult set of sessions.” SF

U2’s lead singer, Bono, was initially vague about the song’s theme, but did say in the book U2 by U2 that the song “is not about oneness; it’s about difference.” SF Prompted by a number of fans who told the band they played the song at their weddings, Bono said, “Are you mad? It’s about splitting up!” WK In fact, Bono may have been writing about the Edge’s marital problems (they split soon after the recording sessions) and/or the girl troubles his friend Guggi, an Irish painter, was experiencing at the time. SF The Edge said the song was “a bitter, twisted, vitriolic conversation between two people who’ve been through some nasty stuff” SF but that it’s also about the “privilege to carry one another. It puts everything in perspective and introduces the idea of grace.” SF

In a 2005 interview with Rolling Stone, Bono said the song was “about someone I knew who was coming out and was afraid to tell his father.” SF The proceeds from the single were donated to AIDS research. American artist David Wojnarowicz, whose work created controversy for its uncompromising depictions of homosexuality and his own infection by the H.I.V. virus, created the artwork for the single. The liner notes described the depiction of how native Americans hunted buffalo by running them off cliffs as representative of how we are “pushed into the unknown by forces we cannot control or even understand.” WK One of the three videos done for the song focuses on buffalo running in a field.

Bono acknowledged “the best U2 songs seem to occupy this place of contradictions.” TC No matter its meaning, “One” is “a record that is both intensely personal and universal as well.” TC Rolling Stone said it is “a ballad in which Bono wonders whether individuality also means eternal loneliness and comes down on the side of hope.” SS Bono said the song “ironically…went in a totally different direction from everything we’d been working on.” TC It is “a much more simple, stately affair, anchored not by tinkering with the latest studio gadgetry but by an elegant four-chord riff, everyman lyrics, and a magisterial singalong chorus.” TB

Mary J. Blige, Adam Lambert, and the Glee Cast have all charted with versions of the song. Johnny Cash, Joe Cocker, Gov’t Mule, and Usher have also recorded the song. Half of the band – Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen – joined with R.E.M. members Michael Stipe and Mike Mills to perform the song at the 1993 inaugural ball for Bill Clinton.

In 1992, readers of Rolling Stone voted “One” the best single of the year. In a 2007 pool done by the Irish radio station Today FM, the song was voted the best Irish single ever. SF In 2003, it was voted the best song EVER by Q Magazine. SF More specifically, in a 2006 VH1 poll, the line “one life, with each other/ Sisters, brothers” was voted the UK’s favorite song lyric. SF


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First posted 12/29/2019; last updated 3/26/2023.