ARTIST: John Legend
TITLE: Once Again
LABEL: Columbia
GENRE: R&B
BITRATE: 184kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 55min total
RELEASE DATE: 2006-10-24
RIP DATE: 2006-10-13
Track List
----------
01. Save Room 3:55
02. Heaven 3:34
03. Stereo 4:09
04. Show Me 4:58
05. Each Day Gets Better 3:47
06. P.D.A. (We Just Don't Care) 4:38
07. Slow Dance 4:43
08. Again 5:01
09. Maxine 4:27
10. Where Did My Baby Go 5:03
11. Maxine's Interlude 1:50
12. Another Again 4:01
13. Coming Home 5:05
Release Notes:
It takes guts, if not outright egomania, to abandon your given surname and
adopt a loaded one like Legend, but the former John Stephens must have
sensed that loftiness would one day be his calling card: Once Again, the
follow-up to the Grammy-gobbling, platinum pile-on that was Get Lifted,
surpasses expectations. Not that it bears much relation to its predecessor.
Again again trots out a stable of talented, modern-minded
producers--Raphael Saadiq, Legend comrade Kanye West, and the unsinkable
will.i.am--but it's nowhere near as self-conscious about embracing the
old-school as the knowing, R&B edge-skimming Lifted. Don't expect a
derivative mash of smudgy, nostalgia-filching sounds, though, because
despite its retro leanings, what's in store somehow crackles with currency.
Call it neo-retro if you must, but never call it unimaginative: first
single "Save Room" coasts, drifts, and floats along a ponderous path spiked
by a cool keyboard-y crescendo; second single "Heaven" busts out a big,
busy beat over a slow seduction; and a couple of selections--"Each Day Gets
Better" and "PDA"--are so bright and twirly they seem custom-made for dizzy
love scenes or jaunty, sunny-day skips through the park. Maybe the most
unusual track is "Show Me," a rock song that pilfers elements of Hendrix
and finds Legend climbing a few octaves to sound, weirdly, like Jeff
Buckley, but it works: so slippery is its beat and so affecting are its
hope-laced lyrics that, oddness aside, it's among the disc's best.
Sandwiched as it is among 14 songs that all sound like future classics,
that's saying something.