Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles’ Solo Careers by Andrew Grant Jackson

Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles’ Solo Careers by Andrew Grant Jackson is another book covering a favorite speculative topic of many popular music fans: what would sort of albums might the Beatles have put out if they had stayed together? I have my own series of imaginary Beatles albums compiled from the best of their solo work, and in the past I wrote about another book covering the same ground, Jeff Walker’s Let’s Put the Beatles Back Together. Inevitably, I found myself looking at the differences between Still the Greatest and the latter book, not to mention my own albums. Rather than creating multi-CD box sets as Walker does, Jackson sticks to the standard album format, though with the interesting (though I’d say unnecessary) twist of making them exactly parallel the actual Beatles’ albums, so there is one double album in addition to a dozen single albums. As mentioned in my review of the other book, I think the album format makes a great deal more sense, as the idea that the Beatles would have released all their original material in multi-album sets even in the pre-CD era strikes me as highly unlikely. Another area where I think Jackson’s book is somewhat superior is that his discussions of the individual songs are more balanced length-wise and have less of a tendency to go too far off on tangents only barely related to the music, whereas Walker’s discussions of Lennon’s songs are a lot longer than those about the others’ material and tend to dwell a little too much on gossipy details about Lennon’s life (though much of it is admittedly interesting). Jackson also includes an appendix listing all of the actual solo albums released by the ex-Beatles, including the songs from each that he has put on his Beatles albums. He even compares the albums in terms of number of songs from each that he’s included. This is something that I thought Walker’s book should have had. Jackson, on the other hand, doesn’t try to improve the songs by editing them as Walker does, a good idea that I wouldn’t bother to actually do in most cases, and Walker adds a lot more side sets like cover albums, live albums and even albums combining the work of related artists like Yoko Ono and Lennon’s two sons.

As might be expected, I don’t agree with all of Jackson’s selections, though in most cases I disagree more about what he left out than what he put in, as most of his choices are at least decent and are often very good, even the ones I left out of my own albums. He doesn’t try to stretch Lennon’s material as far as Walker does, which means that on his post-1980 albums there are only a few Lennon songs (the last one has only McCartney and Starr songs, since Harrison had also died by then). This means his albums present a better picture of the four’s solo material, with McCartney being by far the most prolific over the entire post-breakup period and therefore having the most songs included. Even if it is argued that McCartney was more inconsistent than Lennon, meaning that he had a substantially lower great-to-mediocre ratio in his song output (which is I think debatable), the mere fact that he released far more songs even before Lennon’s death means that he easily had more worthy material. Walker ended up including a lot of songs from posthumous Lennon demo collections in order to have plenty of Lennon songs even on later sets. While I could see including a few of the best of these, it would be more natural to just let songs by McCartney and the others predominate on later faux Beatles sets, and perhaps just put on one or two Lennon songs from earlier in his solo career (after all, it was not unusual for the Beatles both as a band and as solo artists to release songs well after they had been written). Jackson’s solution of sticking fairly strictly to the actual release dates (which also means that his early to mid 1980s “Beatles” albums have few songs by Starr or Harrison, since they went for long periods without releasing anything) is also better than trying too hard to create a balance between contributions.

As noted above, Jackson also ranks the original solo albums by number of songs included. The ones at the top are mostly the ones one would expect, i.e., All Things Must Pass, Band on the Run, Imagine, Plastic Ono Band, Ram, and so forth. Further down there are some oddities, such as there being only a few songs from albums like Flaming Pie (the first of McCartney’s string of excellent post-Anthology albums) or Living in the Material World (which is only inferior to All Things Must Pass, Brainwashed, and possibly Cloud Nine among Harrison’s albums). He also includes too many cover songs. While I think all four did some excellent covers, I don’t think if they’d been releasing albums as the Beatles they’d have put many, if any, on them. It makes more sense to do a separate covers only album, as Walker did, or indeed as Lennon and McCartney did as solo artists (though the latter’s excellent rock ‘n’ roll covers album Run Devil Run included three good original tracks among the covers, including the great title track, which Jackson also leaves out). There are only four songs from Ringo, which is not only easily Starr’s best album but one of the best solo Beatle releases period. Venus and Mars, one of the better Wings albums, is also badly underrepresented. On the other hand, there are as many songs from Walls and Bridges as there are from Plastic Ono Band and Ram (seven each), putting it in the top six. While Walls and Bridges is a good album, I don’t think it’s that much better than Living in the Material World, Venus and Mars, Ringo, or for that matter Mind Games, all of which have far fewer songs included. And that’s without even getting into my disagreements regarding the individual songs, whether from the albums or from singles. But given how subjective these sorts of things are, some disagreement is inevitable. I suspect that if I actually sat down and assembled Jackson’s proposed albums – or for that matter Walker’s – I’d enjoy them immensely, at least nearly as much as I do the ones I put together myself. Still the Greatest will certainly be a major resource if I ever get around to completing my own set of imaginary post-breakup Beatles albums.

New Radio Show on Taiwanese Popular Music

I recently started doing a show on the radio station News98 (98.1) in Taipei, Taiwan. The show is to be broadcast every other Saturday from 3 to 5 pm. I expect to mainly focus on Taiwanese popular music, but I haven’t got it planned out in much detail. Since I collect a pretty wide variety of music, I imagine I’ll end up playing music from all over. I am particularly interested unusual or obscure recordings, I want to try to play as many of these as I can, since listeners are less likely to hear many of them elsewhere. On the other hand, I don’t want to overdo it, especially since at this point I’m not sure how much the people likely to tune in are likely to already know. The trick will be to make sure the audience has some connection to most stuff I play, whether because they’ve actually heard it before (or some version of it), or because they are familiar with the artist, though of course there are also a lot of really good songs that I think most people will like even if they know nothing about them at all. Also I want to have a lot of variety in the themes of my shows, without the contrast being so great from show to show that people find it too much to take. In any case, while I may want to set up a separate blog dedicated especially to this show, for the time being I’ll occasionally post about it here.

For my first show, which was broadcast on November 14, I decided to play a wide variety of songs as sort of a preview of some of the types of music I expect to play on future shows. I framed it to roughly reflect my own journeys in learning about the popular music of Taiwan and nearby places in Asia. Thus I started with one of the songs that was popular at the time I first came to Taiwan, and continued with songs by some of the first singer-songwriters I was introduced to when I started listening seriously to Taiwanese pop. Then I followed my explorations further and further back into the past and into the pop music of the smaller ethnic groups in the country as I started to learn more about Taiwanese popular music history. I then played a few Taiwanese rock songs and rock songs from Hong Kong and Thailand, before concluding with a song by one of my favorite recent Taiwanese aboriginal groups. I hope this selection gave listeners a good idea of the music that can expect to hear on my show in the future.

情網〈詞：劉虞瑞 曲：伍思凱〉 張學友 (1993)
把悲傷留給自己〈詞曲：陳昇〉 陳昇 (1991)
向前走〈詞曲：林強〉 林強 (1990)
戀曲1990〈詞曲：羅大佑〉 羅大佑 (1988)
無聲的所在〈詞：陳世杰 曲：吳俊霖〉 伍佰 & China Blue (1995)
鹿港小鎮〈詞曲：羅大佑〉 羅大佑 (1982)
走在雨中〈詞曲：李泰祥〉 齊豫 (1979)
迴旋曲〈詞：余光中 曲：楊弦〉 楊弦 (1975)
你說過〈詞：吳文良 曲：洪小喬〉 洪小喬 (1972/07)
回想曲〈詞：楊正[周藍萍] 曲：周藍萍〉 紫薇 (1961)
秋風夜雨〈詞：周添旺 曲：楊三郎〉 陳芬蘭 (1965)
無緣〈詞：呂金守 曲：吳盛智〉 吳盛智 (1981)
有空來玩〈詞：陳明仁 曲：卑南歌謠〉 北原山貓 (1997)
我不能出嫁〈詞曲：阿美歌謠〉 盧靜子 (1968)
Heaven on Fire〈詞曲：孫寰東〉 Metal Kids (1988)
長城〈詞：劉卓輝/詹德茂 曲：黃家駒〉 Beyond (1992)
Made In Thailand (W/M: Yuenyong Ophakul) Carabao (1984)
困惑 (fast) 〈詞：查馬克、阿新、Suming 曲：Suming、阿新〉 圖騰樂團 (2006)

Thirty Favorite Soul and R&B Classics

So far on this blog I’ve written a lot about British rock bands like the Beatles, Queen and Genesis, but of course there’s a lot of other great music out there. One type of music which had a very big influence on artists like Paul McCartney, Freddie Mercury and Phil Collins (among many others) is African American music like rhythm and blues and soul. These terms often are used to cover a pretty broad range of music, from the songs that served as the foundation for rock and roll to the music of artists like Prince and Erykah Badu. But for the following list I’ve stuck to the classic soul and R&B of the 1960s and early 1970s. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the great songs in these genres, as most of these artists have a lot of other brilliant songs (I restricted myself to no more than two by any one artist), and there are plenty other important artists that I have to admit are missing from my collection (actually, even in this list there are a few songs I don’t actually own a copy of, though I want to get them all eventually). These are just the songs that came to mind when I was trying to think of some R&B and soul classics. I even included an example of so-called “blue-eyed soul”, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” by the Righteous Brothers, as in my opinion it is good enough to stand alongside the others.

Thirty Favorite Soul and R&B Classics
What'd I Say (Charles) Ray Charles (1959)
Money (That's What I Want) (Gordy/Bradford/Strong) Barrett Strong (1959)
You Really Got a Hold on Me (Robinson) Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (1962)
Stand By Me (King/Leiber/Stoller) Ben E. King (1961)
A Change Is Gonna Come (Cooke) Sam Cooke (1964)
Dancing in the Street (Stevenson/Gaye/Hunter) Martha and the Vandellas (1964)
Under the Boardwalk (Young/Resnick) The Drifters (1964)
My Girl (Robinson/White) The Temptations (1964)
People Get Ready (Mayfield) The Impressions (1965)
The Tracks of My Tears (Robinson/Moore/Tarplin) Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (1965)
You've Lost That Lovin’ Feeling (Spector/Mann/Weil) The Righteous Brothers (1965)
I Got You (I Feel Good) (Brown) James Brown (1965)
You Can't Hurry Love (Holland/Dozier/Holland) The Supremes (1966)
Respect (Redding) Aretha Franklin (1967)
Reach Out (I'll Be There) (Holland/Dozier/Holland) The Four Tops (1966)
When a Man Loves a Woman (Lewis/Wright/Sledge) Percy Sledge (1966)
You Keep Me Hangin' On (Holland/Dozier/Holland) The Supremes (1966)
I'd Rather Go Blind (Jordan/Foster/James) Etta James (1967)
I Heard It Through the Grapevine (Whitfield/Strong) Marvin Gaye (1968)
(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay (Redding/Cropper) Otis Redding (1968)
Think (Franklin/White) Aretha Franklin (1968)
Everyday People (Stewart) Sly & the Family Stone (1968'
War (Whitfield/Strong) Edwin Starr (1970)
What's Goin' On (Cleveland/Benson/Gaye) Marvin Gaye (1971)
Papa Was a Rollin' Stone (Whitfield/Strong) The Temptations (1972)
Ain't No Sunshine (Withers) Bill Withers (1971)
Higher Ground (Wonder) Stevie Wonder (1973)
If You Don't Know Me By Now (Gamble/Huff) Harold Melvin (1972)
Fight the Power (Part 1 & 2) (Isley/Isley/Isley/Isley/Isley/Jasper) The Isley Brothers (1975)
Sir Duke (Wonder) Stevie Wonder (1976)

Taiwanese Aboriginal Music Project Links

I haven't been posting with much frequency here, but I haven't been neglecting my music-related projects entirely. On the contrary, I've gone down to Taidong in east Taiwan every month for the past three months to work on my project on old Taiwanese aboriginal pop music. Here's some news reports on the shows I did in late August. In these shows we went to different aboriginal settlements and played old records for the local people, including a few of the original performers. The reports are all in Chinese and various aboriginal languages, but non-Chinese speakers can at least hear some of the music.

放歌的人 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=gkAj3ej-BKM

黑膠的原聲 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBdaCXh2CBo

Here's a link to one of the songs we did in our show back in February, in which younger singers covered the songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=F3fxrvd0ZH8

Our show in late September was similar to this one. If any online links to it are put up in the future, I'll eventually post them here.

Posthumous Queen Releases Part 2

This is a continuation of my previous blog post on "posthumous" Queen releases, i.e., ones that came out after the death of lead vocalist Freddie Mercury.

No-one But You (Only the Good Die Young)
This 1997 recording was the last newly recorded release to involve bassist John Deacon, who subsequently retired from music. The song was written by guitarist Brian May and was originally intended for a solo project, but when drummer Roger Taylor heard it, he suggested it could be released as a Queen song. Taylor also helped with the arrangement and suggested some changes to the lyrics. While Freddie Mercury himself was of course not on the recording, since he had been dead for six years, and so some might argue it isn’t a true Queen song on the basis that only songs with the full four man lineup are real Queen songs, there are also good arguments for including it as a legitimate part of the group’s canon. First of all, there were actually quite a few Queen songs that didn’t include the full band on the recording or that one or more members played a very minimal part on, including some without Mercury himself. May and Taylor, who handle the vocals here, of course sang lead vocals on a lot of their own compositions on the band’s classic 1970s albums and occasionally on later tracks. While Mercury usually did some backing vocals or even co-lead vocals and sometimes played piano on a lot of these, there were a few he seemingly didn’t appear on at all, so his absence on a “legitimate” Queen song is not unprecedented. What’s more, since the song was inspired by him and the lyrics are largely about him, he is arguably present in spirit (using the phrase loosely). As for the song itself, it is a very solid effort with a good melody, arrangement, and lyrics, and the three band members’ playing is up to their usual standards. It may not be one of their best songs ever, but it is still quite good and makes a nice farewell to Mercury, as well as a suitable swan song for Deacon as an active member of the band.

Queen + Paul Rodgers and The Cosmos Rocks
In 2004, Brian May and Roger Taylor teamed up with Paul Rodgers, formerly the vocalist for Free and Bad Company and the man behind hits such as “All Right Now”, for a concert tour and eventually a studio album named The Cosmos Rocks (released in 2008). They used the moniker “Queen + Paul Rodgers”, inevitably exciting debate among Queen fans about whether it was right to use the Queen name for the combination. This was not the first time the “Queen +” appellation had been used, as the EP featuring George Michael’s performance with May, Taylor and Deacon at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert had been billed as by “Queen + George Michael”, a one off live cover of “The Show Must Go On” with Elton John (Deacon’s last live performance) was released under the name “Queen + Elton John”, and May and Taylor did a cover of “We Are the Champions” with Robbie Williams using the name “Queen + Robbie Williams”, and other performances with guest vocalists had been similarly billed. The recording with Robbie Williams had generated some controversy, not least because Deacon made a statement critical of the combination, but May-Taylor-Rodgers grouping was the focus of even more intense discussion because it was not merely a one-off performance.

Of course no vocalist could replace Mercury in the sense of being exactly like him, and someone who attempted to imitate him would inevitably ring false. On the other hand, there is no reason that May and Taylor shouldn’t want to perform together as much as possible, and it is no surprise that their performances should focus on their work under Queen’s name, as most of their own best songs and recordings were originally performed by Queen. It is true any combination without Mercury or even Deacon can’t be considered Queen in the classic sense. But while May and Taylor’s decision to use the Queen name was obviously motivated in part by commercial considerations – not nearly as many people would turn up for a concert if they used the name Smile (May and Taylor’s pre-Queen band) or some other new name, or even their individual names – they were half of the classic band, they were performing Queen songs and the addition of “+ Paul Rodgers” (or “+ guest singer” for other combinations) to the name helped to distinguish the new grouping from the original group. So I don’t have any real objections to May and Taylor using the name, though I would still make some distinction between their performances with Rodgers and others and the classic four-man group.

As for the merits of the Queen + Paul Rodgers combination, it has been said with some fairness that while Rodgers is a good singer, he wasn’t necessarily a great fit for some of Queen’s material. I think there is something to this criticism. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with radically different reinterpretations of songs, and in that sense it was interesting to hear Rodgers’ take on Queen’s songs, but many of them did sound less like Queen than they might have with a different vocalist. Adam Lambert, who May and Taylor have toured with more recently as Queen + Adam Lambert, seems to be a much better fit in this sense, since Lambert is stylistically much closer to Mercury while still being his own man (George Michael was the best guest vocalist at the tribute concert for much the same reasons). I tend to agree with the critics who have said Rodgers sounded best on the heavier tracks but sounded a bit out place on some of the other material. But since my goal here is to talk about new material released under the Queen name after Mercury’s death, I will just focus on The Cosmos Rocks, specifically the songs that struck me as being more Queen-like in my admittedly limited experience with the album.

Basically, while I enjoyed some of the songs that were written mainly by Rodgers, it is the ones written chiefly by Taylor or May that sound the most Queen-like, especially the ones the latter two sing lead on. This is not surprising, of course, as not only did May and Taylor write around half of Queen’s songs between them, they also sang prominently on quite a few of them. The standout songs for me were “C-lebrity”, “Small”, and “Say It’s Not True” (written by Taylor) and “Some Things That Glitter” and “We Believe” (written by May). These songs struck me as worthy of addition to the Queen canon, or at least as good candidates for inclusion. Some of the other songs were let down by weak lyrics – Taylor was particularly inconsistent in this area, writing good or even great lyrics on the above songs and terrible lyrics on others – and others just didn’t make much of an impression on me, though perhaps my view of them will change when I listen to the album more (for that matter, my favorable impressions of the songs mentioned might also change on closer listening).

Queen Forever
This compilation, which came out late last year, is the most recent Queen release and the first since Made in Heaven to feature previously unreleased material recorded with Freddie Mercury. Unfortunately, the new material is limited to three songs. The rest is previously released Queen songs. While these are of course mostly very good, they are unnecessary for fans like me who have the albums already, with the possible exception of a few songs like “Lily of the Valley” which on the original albums opened or close with segue-ways to other songs, making it difficult to separate them for purposes of making mix tapes or compilations. It would have been better to have released the new material with some demos or other unreleased material, if at all possible, or perhaps as an EP. Regardless, here’s my take on the new songs.

Let Me in Your Heart Again
This song, written by Brian May, was the only song that was completely new to me. It had been previously released, but only on an album by Anita Dobson, then May’s lover and later his wife. Queen had attempted a recording for the 1984 album The Works but abandoned it, and those initial efforts served as the basis for this recording. It’s a pretty good song, though not a great one, and qualifies as an authentic Queen song, if not a classic.

Love Kills
This song was familiar to me and most fans as a Freddie Mercury solo track. Supposedly it was also considered for The Works but rejected before being released by Mercury as a solo track from the soundtrack of Giorgio Moroder’s restoration of the classic film Metropolis, and apparently all four members of the group, including Deacon, appear on it. If it had been on The Works, it would have been the first Queen song to have been co-written by someone outside the band (in this case Moroder, who wrote it with Mercury), with the only later examples being “All God’s Children” (written by Mercury and Mike Moran) and “Too Much Love Will Kill You” (written by May with Frank Musker and Elizabeth Lamers). The version on Queen Forever is much slower than the Mercury solo version. It’s a decent track, though I haven’t decided whether I like this version or the Mercury solo version better. In any event, both versions fall into the “good but not great” category.

There Must Be More to Life Than This
This track, a version of a song written and previously released by Mercury on his first solo album Mr. Bad Guy, was the most widely discussed new release on Queen Forever because it is a duet between Mercury and Michael Jackson. It was one of (supposedly) three songs Mercury and Jackson recorded together in the early 1980s, but unfortunately this was the only one May and Taylor were able to get permission to release. I’ve previously heard a pirated recording of this song with just Jackson on vocals as well as a duet version, and I’ve also heard a pirated version of the Jackson song “State of Shock” sung by Mercury and Jackson (I’ve never seen or heard any version of the third song, said to be called “Victory”). It was one of the better songs on Mr. Bad Guy, and this is a reasonably good version as well, though it’s a little hard for me to think of it as a Queen song.

Though some of the songs discussed above (including "No-one But You" and the songs from The Cosmos Rocks) only seem to marginally qualify as Queen songs, they are all pretty good and if assembled together could make a decent Queen album, though a somewhat short one. In any case, while it is probably too much to expect any more releases of unreleased material by the classic Queen lineup, I hope May and Taylor continue to make music, including perhaps some new recordings together (it might be interesting to see what they could do with Lambert, for example). The old Queen may be gone forever now, but as the song says, "the show must go on".

Whatever Gets You Thru Your Life: A Beatles Album from 1975

This is the last of my imaginary Beatles albums of the 1970s, or at least the last one that I finished. For readers who don't haven't seen any of the other albums, what I've done is taken some of the best recordings by the four solo Beatles and put them together in albums, one for each year beginning in 1970. The results are about as close as we can get to hearing what the Beatles might have released as a band if they had stayed together. I assembled this album, along with What Is Life (1970), Working Class Heroes (1971), Imagine (1972), Live and Let Die (1973), and Band on the Run (1974), quite a few years ago, and at the time, I intended to continue putting together more albums in the series, though I would have had to start spacing them out more as the four became less prolific, but I never got around to it. I hope to still do it eventually, though I would also be attempted to make a few changes to the ones I've already done. Nevertheless, while other Beatles fans would no doubt make some very different choices as far as tracks to include (and even I might do the same if I were to start again), I have to say that these albums all sound pretty good, and the best of them compare well to the albums that the Beatles actually released when they were together, proving that even though the band had broken up, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr all retained their talent.

This particular album may not at first listen seem quite the equal of most of its predecessors, as the most obvious tracks from the excellent 1973 albums that I continued to draw on for this collection had been used already, but these songs are quite good too, though they may take a bit more time to grown on the listener. As with the previous albums, I have simply pasted in the liner notes I originally wrote for the album, with a brief addition at the end.

Just after finishing this entry, I went book shopping on Barnes & Noble's and discovered that last year a book with the same premise as this album series of mine was published with the title Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of The Beatles' Solo Careers. This is actually the second book that I know of based on this concept, the other one being Let’s Put the Beatles Back Together Again 1970-2010, which I wrote about in late 2012. I decided to get this new one to see what the author picked for his albums. Though I put together my six albums before I knew about either, it's always interesting to compare other people's choices, and their selections can serve as a reference if I get around to doing any more of these imaginary Beatles albums, though in the end I'll use my own format and pick the songs that I personally think fit best.

Whatever Gets You Thru Your Life

Let Me Roll It (McCartney/McCartney) 4:47 (1973/12/05)
The Lord Loves the One (That Loves the Lord) (Harrison) 4:33 (1973/05/30)
Sunshine Life For Me (Sail Away Raymond) (Harrison) 2:44 (1973/11/02)
I Know (I Know) (Lennon) 3:49 (1973/11/02)
Mamunia (McCartney/McCartney) 4:50 (1973/12/05)
Whatever Gets You Thru the Night (Lennon) 3:16 (1974/09/26; single 1974/09/23[US])
Hari's On Tour (Express) (Harrison) 4:40 (1974/12/09)
(It's All Down to) Goodnight Vienna (Lennon) 2:35 (1974/11/15)
Junior's Farm (McCartney/McCartney) 3:01 (1974/10/25)
Dark Horse (Harrison) 3:54 (1974/12/09)
Steel And Glass (Lennon) 4:36 (1974/09/26)
Letting Go (McCartney) 4:34 (1975/05/27)

Total Time - 47:27

Bonus Tracks: Lucille 5:57 (1974/03/31)
Stand By Me 6:04 (1974/03/31)


Let Me Roll It
Written by Paul and Linda McCartney; Performed by Paul McCartney and Wings
Recorded 1973/09; Released 1973/12/05
From Band On The Run

The Lord Loves the One (That Loves the Lord)
Written and Performed by George Harrison
Recorded 1972/10-1973/01; Released 1973/05/30
From Living In The Material World

Sunshine Life For Me (Sail Away Raymond)
Written by George Harrison; Performed by Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr)
Guitar: George Harrison
Recorded 1973/03; Released 1973/11/02
From Ringo

I Know (I Know)
Written and Performed by John Lennon
Recorded 1973/07-08; Released 1973/11/02
From Mind Games

Mamunia
Written by Paul and Linda McCartney; Performed by Paul McCartney and Wings
Recorded 1973/09; Released 1973/12/05
From Band On The Run

Whatever Gets You Thru the Night
Written and Performed by John Lennon
Recorded 1974/06-07; Released 1974/09/26 [US single 1974/09/23]
From Walls And Bridges
[Note: The link is to a version with John only on vocals (i.e. without Elton John, who aside from singing played keyboards), though on my CD I used the official version with Elton.]

Hari's On Tour (Express)
Written and Performed by George Harrison
Recorded 1974/10-11; Released 1974/12/09
From Dark Horse

(It's All Down to) Goodnight Vienna
Written by John Lennon; Performed by Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr)
Piano: John Lennon
Recorded 1974/08; Released 1974/11/15
From Goodnight Vienna

Junior's Farm
Written by Paul and Linda McCartney; Performed by Paul McCartney and Wings
Recorded 1974/06-08; Released 1974/10/25
Single

Dark Horse
Written and Performed by George Harrison
Recorded 1974/10-11; Released 1974/12/09
From Dark Horse

Steel And Glass
Written and Performed by John Lennon
Recorded 1974/06-07; Released 1974/09/26 [US single 1974/09/23]
From Walls And Bridges

Letting Go
Written by Paul McCartney; Performed by Paul McCartney and Wings
Recorded 1975/01-2; Released 1975/05/27
From Venus And Mars

Bonus Tracks:
Lucille
Written by Penniman/Collins; Performed by John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Friends
Guitar and Lead Vocal: John Lennon
Drums and Harmony Vocal: Paul McCartney
Recorded 1974/03/31

Stand By Me
Written by King/Leiber/Stoller; Performed by John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Friends
Guitar and Lead Vocal: John Lennon
Drums and Harmony Vocal: Paul McCartney
Recorded 1974/03/31

Having released (in this what-if imaginary world) two albums in 1973, the Beatles might have followed it up with this album, entitled Whatever Gets You Thru Your Life, in early 1975. The title comes from the lyrics of "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night", which in the real world appeared on John's Walls And Bridges album and featured Elton John on keyboards and harmony vocals. It was also released as a single, resulting in a bet between John and Elton. Elton, convinced of the song's commercial potential, bet John that it would hit number one. John didn't think it would, and agreed to appear on stage with Elton if he lost the bet. The result was John's last ever live concert appearance a few months later. One of the other Lennon tracks on this album is "I Know (I Know)", from Mind Games, and the other, from Walls And Bridges, is "Steel And Glass", which is apparently about Allen Klein, the manager John, George and Ringo had hired over Paul's protests in 1969, but who was finally dropped by them in 1973.

Paul, though overall the most prolific of the four, was the only one to not release an album in 1974, having released Band On The Run at the end of 1973. The first of his contributions, "Let Me Roll It", is another track from Band On The Run and seemed a good choice to open this album. The second, the typically catchy "Junior's Farm", was released as a single in 1974, and the final track, "Letting Go", is a solid album track from Wings' 1975 album Venus And Mars (more tracks from this album will appear on the next "Beatles" album, as will more from John's Walls And Bridges).

The first track from George is the wordily titled "The Lord Loves the One (That Loves the Lord)", a bluesy rocker with some cool guitar from Living In The Material World. The instrumental "Hari's On Tour (Express)" and "Dark Horse" are both from his 1974 album, also called Dark Horse. Unfortunately this album was marred by George's serious case of laryngitis, which is apparent on the title track. However, despite the obvious strain in his voice, the song is a good one.

George also wrote one of the two songs Ringo sings on this album, "Sunshine Life For Me (Sail Away Raymond)", which like the Ringo songs on the previous two sets comes from Ringo. In fact I didn't originally intend to include any songs from that album here, but as Brent said this was one of his favorite tracks and it's also quite short, I decided to squeeze it in. "Goodnight Vienna", written by John, is the title track to Ringo's 1974 album, which followed the same formula as Ringo, though this time George and Paul weren't involved.

Finally, there are the two bonus tracks, "Lucille" and "Stand By Me". [Addendum: These are from a jam that took place in LA in 1974 at John's beach house. Paul was visiting and the two of them started playing, along with other musicians present such as Stevie Wonder. It seems that most of those involved were not entirely sober, and the jams were often rather aimless. These two tracks are the most listenable, and while far from spectacular musically they are of great historical interest as being the last recordings of John and Paul playing together, and the only ones made in the 1970s.]

My Five Favorite Eagles Songs

Having recently watched the first half of "History of the Eagles", I thought I'd post a list of my five favorite Eagles songs, with the caveat that I haven't heard any of their albums other than Hotel California and The Long Run in their entirety (and it's been many years since I heard the latter - not that most of the album tracks on that one were much good anyway). Three of the following songs are from Hotel California, but I know I'm not alone in considering that the peak of their career (also I lean to rock over country, and Hotel California is much more rock than the band's earlier material). I won't be delving into whether Glenn Frey and Don Henley were (or are) arrogant jerks or who was at fault for all the fights in the band. I will note that regardless of his personality, Henley strikes me as the most talented member of the group, both as a singer and a lyricist (he also has some of the best solo material), while Joe Walsh is definitely the coolest. Also, at the very least Henley and Frey do support many good causes. Whether they treated bandmates like Don Felder as well as they should have is another question.

Hotel California – With music by Don Felder and a melody and lyrics by Don Henley and Glenn Frey (the lyrics are mostly by Henley, I believe), this is of course the Eagles’ most famous song and their crowning achievement. The music and lyrics are great, as are the solos by Felder and Joe Walsh at the end. The song is no doubt overplayed on classic rock radio, but since I haven’t listened to classic rock radio in many years, that’s not an issue for me.

The Last Resort – Though credited to both Don Henley and Glenn Frey, Frey has said it was nearly all by Henley. Henley wasn't entirely satisfied with the music, but he was justifiable proud of the lyrics. These really are great, equal to those in "Hotel California", concisely tearing apart humankind's tendency to destroy every place it goes to, while getting digs in at the concept of manifest destiny and at religion. The music, while a simple progression, works well, and Henley's singing is superb, especially at the end. It really is, as Frey called it, "Henley's opus".

Take It to the Limit – This song was written by bassist Randy Meisner with Frey and Henley, and Meisner sang lead. It was the band's biggest hit up to that time, and deservedly so, with a great chorus and nice vocals from Meisner.

Life in the Fast Lane – This song was based on a riff by guitarist Joe Walsh and finished up by Frey and Henley. One of the Eagles' hardest rocking songs, and a good example of what Walsh brought to the band.

One of These Nights – This song by Henley and Frey is another showcase for Don Henley's vocals, and has a great melody.

Other favorites by the Eagles, in no particular order: I Can’t Tell You Why, Witchy Woman, Take It Easy, James Dean, Pretty Maids All in a Row, The Long Run, Already Gone, Get Over It, Seven Bridges Road

Posthumous Queen Releases Part 1: Made In Heaven

Having recently done a review of Queen Forever for KKBox (though it doesn't seem to available online yet), I figured it might be interesting to do a review of posthumous Queen albums and songs. First, however, I should explain what I mean by “posthumous” in this situation. Of course Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon are alive and (in the first two cases and as far as I know the third too) well, and May and Taylor continue to perform and occasionally record using the Queen name. However, I think even they would not argue too strongly with the assertion that in some sense Queen came to an end with the death of Freddie Mercury. Even if Mercury wasn’t almost impossible to replace, the band’s classic four man lineup was together for so long that unlike other bands with more fluid lineups, it’s hard to think of any other combination of musicians as Queen, much as only John, Paul, George and Ringo could be the Beatles (with apologies to Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe). So by posthumous releases I mean anything released by Queen after Mercury’s death, and especially anything with Mercury (and Deacon) on it. Though May and Taylor have both released solo material in this period, including a few pretty good songs, I’m also excluding purely solo tracks, except where they were re-arranged as Queen songs.

Made In Heaven
The main posthumous Queen release was the 1995 album Made in Heaven. This was an entire album of previously unheard Queen recordings – previously unheard as Queen recordings, that is. About half the album was made up of songs that had been released in other forms, and in fact one song, “My Life Has Been Saved”, had even been released by Queen. This shouldn’t detract from the listeners’ enjoyment of the music, which is equal to that on most other Queen albums (though not their very best albums from the mid to late 1970s), but it is rather interesting to see how the band managed to create a fairly cohesive album from a mix of unfinished recordings, solo tracks and relatively obscure prior releases.

When I first bought this album, I assumed that most of it had been recorded in the months between the release of the album Innuendo in early 1991 and Mercury’s death late that same year. While I was big enough of a Queen fan to have all the band’s albums in some form or another and even some of the members’ solo albums, there was a lot I didn’t have. I had Mercury’s solo album Mr. Bad Guy, so I recognized “Made In Heaven” and “I Was Born to Love You”, and even with those I briefly (and looking back somewhat naively) entertained the notion that Mercury had actually recorded new vocals, especially in the latter case, as there are some noticeable differences between the Made in Heaven version and the older one, though no doubt it was actually because the band simply used part of an unused take from the original sessions. I also had Brian May’s Back to the Light, released just after Mercury’s death, so I was familiar with “Too Much Love Will Kill You” (I also knew that he had sung it at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, though it was cut from the broadcast I saw at the time). But the other songs were new to me, and so as far as I knew, they had been recorded after Innuendo had been finished. Not that I was the only one to think so; many reviewers at the time were seemingly under the impression that with song titles like “Let Me Live”. “My Life Has Been Saved”, and “Too Much Love Will Kill You”, much of the album was about Mercury and his struggles with his illness, as most people assumed that the songs had been written in Mercury’s last year or two. In fact, only three of them were post-Innuendo, with the others dating back further and some of them also having been previously released. What follows is a rundown of the songs on the album and their origins.

It’s a Beautiful Day
This is one of my favorite tracks on the album, though I think (after 20 years I can’t be sure) that even when I first heard it I noticed that they had deliberately stretched it out. In fact, it dates back further than anything else on the album. During sessions for the 1980 Queen album The Game, Freddie Mercury recorded a brief demo of this song with only his piano and vocals. While the lyrics rather simple and possibly ad-libbed, the melody, vocals, and piano part are all lovely, as can be heard in the original recording, released on the bonus disc for the 2011 remaster of The Game. But for whatever reason Mercury never took the song any further, and it is this 1980 recording that was used on Made In Heaven. What the other three did was to add a lot more instruments to Mercury’s recording, and in particular add an instrumental section that was apparently mainly the work of John Deacon. This was all done with the band’s usual skill, though as I noted the seams show in places, particularly in the transition where they simply copy and paste Mercury’s line “No one’s gonna stop me now” several times. But it remains a great track, even if Mercury’s original demo is in some ways just as enjoyable. The song ended up being credited to Queen (even the recording on The Game reissue), but it seems almost certain that the core song itself is entirely the work of Mercury, while as noted the rest of the Made in Heaven version is said to have been mostly written by Deacon.

Made in Heaven
As noted above, this song was originally from Mercury’s solo album Mr. Bad Guy. Though I am certainly a big fan of Mercury’s singing and songwriting, I have to say that, speaking as objectively as possible, only a handful of the songs on this album reached the standards of the material he wrote for Queen. But from the time I first acquired the album, I considered “Made in Heaven” the best song on it, and the Queen version (created by combining new instrumentation played by the remaining three with Mercury’s original vocals and keyboards) is even better than the original. This is definitely one of the strongest tracks on the album, even if it was also one of the few that I knew from the start not to be an entirely new recording.

Let Me Live
At first listen, this song sounds almost like it was recorded live in the studio, with the band’s three singers (Mercury, May and Taylor) trading verses supported by a choir of backing vocalists. Also, the title and lyrics leave the impression that it was about Mercury’s illness. In fact, the song is an example of the impressive job May, Deacon and Taylor did in assembling the album. The song supposedly dates back to 1983 and was recorded when Queen was fooling around in the studio with Rod Stewart. Apparently it was intended to be a duet between Mercury and Stewart, though as far as I know no bootlegs of the original recording were ever leaked. It’ s quite possible that the song as recorded at the time was incomplete. In any case, it seems that Mercury only recorded one verse and the chorus, so to complete the song May and Taylor had to record additional verses. Whether the lyrics for these had already been written or were added when the band was working on Made in Heaven I don’t know, though my guess is that the latter was the case, and that the bridge (sung by Taylor) was also a late addition. Regardless, the final result is pretty successful.

Mother Love
Unlike the first few songs on the album, this really was written and recorded during Mercury’s last year of life. In fact, it was the last song he ever recorded vocals for, and he proved unable to finish it, never making it back into the studio to do the third and final verse, leaving May to sing it. Even without knowing this, I felt from my first listen that the song had a poignant, emotional edge to it that was not common to Queen songs. Mostly written by May, Mercury contributed to the lyrics (whether he wrote most or just some of them is unclear), and it’s possible that in this last recording he let some of what he was going through show in the song. In any case, this is another strong track, though it is relatively dark and subdued for a Queen song.

My Life Has Been Saved
A melodic piece of pop rock, it probably should have been obvious that this was the work of John Deacon, though it’s credited to the whole band. This alone among all the songs on the album had already been released as a Queen song, but as it was a B-side from The Miracle and was not included as a bonus track on the re-mastered CD of the album I owned, I had never heard it before. Once again, some listeners undoubtedly took lyrics like “I read it in the papers/There’s death on every page” as a reference to Mercury’s situation, but since he hadn’t even officially told his bandmates about his illness at the time (though they may have started to guess the truth), it seems unlikely that Deacon was making any reference to it. The Made in Heaven version is an improvement on the original version, though the latter is pretty good as well.

Heaven for Everyone
This song was the first single released off the album, and as the first new Queen release since Mercury’s death (discounting the “Bohemian Rhapsody”/”Those Were the Days of Our Lives” single released immediately after he died) it went straight to number 1 in the UK. But like much of the rest of the album, it wasn’t a new song; in fact, two different versions of it had been released previously. Written by Roger Taylor, it was originally released in 1988 under the name of his band the Cross on their debut album Shove It and as a single off that album. On the single version, the lead vocals were by Roger Taylor, but Freddie Mercury made a guest appearance as backing vocalist, and on the album version (in the UK, at least), Mercury sang lead. The Queen version was apparently recorded using Mercury’s vocals from these recordings with a new instrumental backing track, much like the new versions of “Made in Heaven” and “I Was Born to Love You”. While the Cross version was known to a few dedicated Queen fans, most listeners probably assumed “Heaven for Everyone” was a new song, as I did at first. Ironically, though this was the biggest hit from Made in Heaven, I prefer many of the other songs on the album. It’s still a good song, but it lacks the energy of songs like “Made in Heaven”, “Let Me Live” or “It’s a Beautiful Day” and is not quite as poignant as “Mother Love” or “A Winter’s Tale”.

Too Much Love Will Kill You
This is yet another song that had previously been released as a solo track, in this case by Brian May. In this case, I (and most other Queen fans) knew it already, not only from May’s solo album Back to the Light, but because he’d performed it at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert (though his performance was cut from the broadcast I saw). At the time some critics apparently assumed that May had written it in response to Mercury’s death (I seem to recall that one even criticized it for being in somewhat bad taste), but as we learned with the release of Made in Heaven it had been previously recorded by Queen at the time of The Miracle with Mercury on vocals. The Made in Heaven version was presumably just a release of that recording, though perhaps with a little later tweaking. I tend to rank this song a little above “Heaven for Everyone”, though it’s not my favorite track on the album. Mercury’s impassioned vocals are a plus (though May's version is not bad), but the song meanders a bit.

You Don’t Fool Me
This is another of the few truly new songs, though in fact it was apparently patched together from various bits by producer David Richards, who from what the band members have said deserves a lot of credit for creating the song – indeed he arguably should have gotten a writing credit. However, the limited nature of the recordings he used to assemble the song shows to some degree, as there really isn’t that much substance to the track. Perhaps for this reason, it’s one of the weaker tracks on the album, though it’s still entertaining in its way, and as the only funk-oriented track on the album, it adds diversity to the album.

A Winter’s Tale
Along with “Mother Love” and “You Don’t Fool Me”, this song was apparently one of the only tracks on the album that was entirely written in the months following the release of Innuendo. While credited to Queen as a whole, it is said to be the last song Freddie Mercury wrote. The liner notes in the reissue merely say that it was his last complete lyric and that the chorus was completed in the studio (whether this is referring to the lyrics or the music is unclear), but presumably he wrote most of the music or at least the melody and he may even have played the keyboard. It’s a pleasant song with evocative lyrics and a heartfelt vocal from Mercury, though I can’t say it is the equal of his very best compositions on previous albums, particular in his peak years in the 1970s. In other words, it is a good song but not quite a great one. Still, it is a fitting farewell from Mercury as the composer of so many brilliant songs over the years, and it also works well as the final new track on the album.

It’s a Beautiful Day (Reprise)
Despite the briefness of Mercury’s original tune, the rest of the band evidently liked “It’s a Beautiful Day” a lot and enjoyed finding different ways to add to it, as not only did they open the album with it, they reprised it at the end. As I mentioned above, I really like the core song, short though it is, and I think it’s an excellent choice to open and close the album.

Yeah and Untitled Track
The remainder of Made in Heaven consists of a single “Yeah” from Freddie Mercury that is treated as a separate track. It is followed (on CD) by a 22 minute untitled track that consists of looped sounds and other musical samples and bits. It was put together mainly by producer David Richards with some contributions from May and Taylor. While both of these tracks are interesting in different ways, neither is a Queen song in the conventional sense, so it makes little sense to judge them by the standards of the rest of the band’s catalogue.

Heaven for Everyone was a very successful album at the time, and it was an effective coda to the band’s years with Mercury. May, Taylor and Deacon managed to put together an album which at least on the surface was a fairly unified whole, with an overall quality that was comparable to most of the band’s albums from the previous decade, though not equal to those released in their peak years in the mid to late 1970s. A closer examination reveals that the album was in truth a bit of a patchwork, but in some ways that makes the three remaining members’ achievement more impressive. To fans who had been obsessive enough to collect all of the band’s releases, including solo work, half the songs would have been recognizable, but even for them the rest would have been new or at least unheard (since “It’s a Beautiful Day” and “Let Me Live” had not been previously released in any form, even though their origins dated back to the early 1980s). For that matter, the new arrangements of the previously released songs were arguably better than the originals, or at least were interesting variations. So while it wasn’t by any means the band’s best album, it was a pretty decent one, and in my opinion (and probably that of many other fans) the last true Queen album, though a number of individual Queen songs have been released subsequently, as I will discuss in the forthcoming second part of my examination of Queen releases after Mercury’s death.

[As a side note, it occurs to me that in many ways Heaven for Everyone is a bit like my series of post-breakup “Beatles” albums. Like them, it consists at least in large part of solo recordings by various members re-imagined as songs by the band. Of course, there are many differences, such as the inclusion of older unreleased tracks originally recorded by the band as a whole (though I did have one such track (“Not Guilty”) on Working Class Heroes, my second post-breakup Beatles album) and more importantly the fact that, even though their parts were mostly recorded separately (especially Mercury’s), all members of Queen appeared on most of the tracks, while since the songs on the “Beatles” albums were all actually solo tracks, other Beatles only rarely played on them. In this respect, Heaven for Everyone more closely resembles “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” from the Beatles Anthology sets, with John Lennon in Mercury’s role as the deceased member whose recordings the rest of the band built the song around.]

The Joni Mitchell Songbook (1967-2004)

A few months ago it was reported that Joni Mitchell had collapsed in her home and been rushed to the hospital. Today I read a more recent news report saying that she is still in the hospital, though there were conflicting accounts of how bad her condition is. In any case, as a sort of tribute to her I thought I’d post the track listing from a rather rough compilation of her songs as recorded by other artists. It’s not necessarily one of my best compilations, because I did it rather quickly and included pretty much every Joni Mitchell cover I had or could get ahold of, without taking a lot of time to select the very best recordings. Also, for many of these songs I prefer Mitchell’s own versions. But there are definitely some great classic recordings here, such as CSNY’s “Woodstock” (very different from Mitchell’s own version, and just as good) or Judy Collins’s “Both Sides Now” (a song that was even covered by singers like Frank Sinatra and Doris Day), and a lot of very interesting versions of some excellent songs (such as Dylan's version of "Big Yellow Taxi", a song more famously covered by Counting Crows and Amy Grant, Neil Diamond's version of "Free Man in Paris", or Nazareth's hard rock version of "This Flight Tonight"). The great variety of artists shows how widespread Mitchell’s impact has been, an impact that goes beyond the world of music (just to take one example, Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of former US President Bill Clinton and prospective future US President Hillary Rodham Clinton, was named for Mitchell's song "Chelsea Morning"). Someday it’d be nice to do a more comprehensive overview of Mitchell’s songs, but I’d have to listen to a lot more of her albums first (at present I only have a compilation album and Blue, though I’ve heard parts of other albums elsewhere), but for now, I will just wish her a quick recovery.

The Joni Mitchell Songbook (1967-2004)
1 The Circle Game Buffy Sainte-Marie (1967)
2 Both Sides Now Judy Collins (1968/01)
3 Song To A Seagull Buffy Sainte-Marie (1967)
4 Urge For Going Tom Rush (1968)
5 Michael From Mountains Judy Collins (1968/01)
6 I Don't Know Where I Stand Fairport Convention (1968/06)
7 Chelsea Morning Judy Collins (1969/07)
8 Eastern Rain Fairport Convention (1969/01)
9 Big Yellow Taxi Bob Dylan (1970[1973])
10 Woodstock Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (1970/03)
11 All I Want Keith Jarrett (1971)
12 (He Played Real Good) For Free The Byrds (1973)
13 That Song About the Midway Bonnie Raitt (1974)
14 This Flight Tonight Nazareth (1974)
15 Dreamland Roger McGuinn (1976)
16 Free Man In Paris Neil Diamond (1977)
17 Blue Sarah McLachlan (1994)
18 A Case Of You Tori Amos (1994)
19 River Travis (1999)
20 California Wilson Phillips (2004)
21 Black Crow Diane Krall (2004)

Some Thoughts on the Genesis Compilation R-Kive

I only became aware of the release of R-Kive, the 3-CD Genesis compilation released in the fall of 2014, a few months after it came out. I wrote a lengthy review – actually more of a description simultaneously serving as a summary of the band’s career – of it for the music service KKBox (the first part is online here, though I'm not sure what happened to the second part). As long as that article was, there was a lot more I could have said about R-Kive that I didn’t include there, so this is sort of a supplemental review. First of all, I should note that my earlier article, though written in the knowledge that it would be mainly used to promote the album, is an honest summary of my feelings about the compilation. I really do consider it to be an excellent summary of the band’s career, and I love the idea of including songs from each of the five key members’ solo careers to provide a fuller picture and introduce people to music that they might not have heard before. Also, all things considered, I think the song selection is a good one, and for the most part it’s hard to argue with the choices. I really do recommend the set very highly to any music fan who isn’t familiar with the music of Genesis or is only familiar with a small part of their career.

Of course, like any other fan, I can think of alternative choices that I might have preferred over the songs included. However, I must admit that I like all the songs that were chosen enough that I would have a hard time dropping them, with maybe one or two exceptions. The truth is, if I were to make my own version of R-Kive, I’d be tempted to expand it to four CDs in order to include even more songs I think it’s a shame to leave out while keeping the vast majority of what’s already on there. In particular, I’d be inclined to add more solo tracks, not because I necessarily prefer them to the Genesis tracks (on the contrary, on the whole I prefer the Genesis material throughout the band’s career, even in the 1980s – though that sentiment would no doubt horrify a vocal segment of fans), but because I think that would make the set an even more thorough introduction to the complete world of Genesis. In fact, even four CDs isn’t quite enough to fit all the songs I consider essential listening, especially since many of the Genesis tracks I’d want to add are very long (and just four eight to ten minute tracks take up half a CD). I will talk about my attempt to assemble a 4-disc R-Kive set in a future essay.

First, some additional thoughts on the collection as a whole. I particularly like the chronological sequencing, as it allows listeners to hear how the band (and its individual members) evolved over time. While the previously released Platinum Collection is also a great overview of the group’s career, one reason it is surpassed by this collection, aside from the inclusion of solo tracks in this one, is that the previous set was sequenced backwards, starting with the newer material and going back. While this is more or less how I was exposed to Genesis myself, having first heard the hits in the 1980s and then gone back to the early years, I prefer to listen the band’s evolution in the forward direction, not least because, unlike some other fans, I think the later material is just as good in its way as the early stuff, if not always quite as inventive. In any case as in reality the band’s evolution happened in this direction, going forward in time is the best way to hear it.

The exclusion of the first album – most likely mainly because of licensing issues, not because the band prefers to ignore that part of their career – means we don’t hear the very first part of this evolution, but “The Knife” does make a much better opening track than anything on the debut would have. While some of the same fans referred to above, namely those who only like complex songs in the progressive rock vein, may think that the compilation is too heavily weighted toward the later material – particularly as Invisible Touch and We Can’t Dance are represented by three songs apiece, whereas the early albums, with the exception of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, are only represented by a single song each, this is in fact debatable, especially given the length of the early songs. In fact, “Supper’s Ready” alone takes up more space on the collection than all the songs from either of the above-mentioned albums. In fact, if anything is underrepresented, it is a few of the albums in the middle period, like Wind & Wuthering and Duke (which incidentally indicates that Tony Banks, despite his central role in Genesis – to the point that some, including at one point Steve Hackett, accused him of controlling things – did not make the final decisions on the Genesis songs, as he has often said that these two albums are, along with Foxtrot, his favorites). My biggest objection to the selection of Genesis songs included, and it’s not a big one, probably lies here, though it’s hard to fix it within a three CD format.

The solo songs were apparently chosen by the relevant band members themselves. It’s interesting to note that both Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel avoided picking their very biggest commercial successes and most widely known songs such as “Against All Odds”, “One More Night”, “Sussudio”, “Sledgehammer”, and “In Your Eyes”, while Mike Rutherford’s picks are more obvious (since Banks and Hackett have had less mainstream commercial success – aside from Hackett’s involvement in GTR – their choices can’t really be judged on this basis). I’ll have more to say on the individual song choices later on, but I’ll say that while I might have chosen slightly differently, overall the solo songs accomplish the stated purpose of providing representative examples of each member’s solo work and showing how they fit into the context of the history of the band itself.

So if I had to stick to the three CD format, how would my version of R-Kive differ from the one that was released? All the songs on the first disc are great, so it would be hard to make any changes. I would be a little tempted to substitute “Firth of Fifth” for “The Cinema Show”, as the former is perhaps my favorite Gabriel-era Genesis song, but as the latter is another favorite, it’s hard to imagine actually taking it off. I would consider dropping “I Know What I Like” instead, but I like it too, if not quite as well as the other two songs from Selling England by the Pound, and as the band’s first hit single, it has too much historical significance to leave off (anyway, since it’s much shorter, dropping it wouldn’t create enough room for the much longer “Firth of Fifth”). As far as the other albums are concerned, while there are one or two songs I like as well as the ones that were included (e.g. “The Fountain of Salamacis” versus “The Musical Box”), the ones that were picked are pretty much what I’d have picked. I don’t have especially strong opinions about most tracks on Steve Hackett’s Voyage of the Acolyte (except that I dislike some of the keyboard sounds, which hinders my enjoyment of a few tracks), but “Ace of Wands” is a good choice.

On the second CD, it’s a little easier to think of possible substitutes for what was included, but again the latter are still great, so I’m not sure I’d actually change anything, with maybe one exception. I like most of the tracks on A Trick of the Tail about equally, so while if starting with a blank slate I might well have chosen “Dance on a Volcano”, “Entangled”, “Squonk” or “Mad Man Moon”, I like “Ripples” just as much as any of these, so I probably would just stick with that. Wind and Wuthering has three of my favorite Genesis songs, “One for the Vine”, “Afterglow”, and “Blood on the Rooftops”. If I were forced to rank them, they’d probably be in that order, but it would be a close match. So while I think it’s a shame that they left off “One for the Vine” and “Blood on the Rooftops”, especially the former, if they’d left off “Afterglow” I would have thought it was a shame, too, so probably I’d keep their selection. “Solsbury Hill” is one of my favorite Gabriel songs, so I’d definitely keep that, and while there are songs on And Then There Were Three I like as well or even slightly better than “Follow You Follow Me”, the latter is still good and is historically significant as the band’s first big hit in both the UK and US. The Tony Banks and Steve Hackett songs are reasonable choices (though if I had been making the selection I might have picked a song from Banks’s 1983 album The Fugitive, and there are other Hackett songs I would have considered), “Biko” is a great choice from Gabriel’s third album, and the Genesis songs from Duke, Abacab, and Genesis are all obvious choices, though each of these albums has at least one or two more songs that are excellent candidates. “In the Air Tonight” is an even more obvious choice for Phil Collins, and “Silent Running” is probably still my favorite Mike & the Mechanics song, so there’s no arguing with that selection either. In fact, the only pick I’d be strongly tempted to change is “Easy Lover”. I like the song, but there are better choices. My favorite Collins song other than “In the Air Tonight” is “I Wish It Would Rain Down”, but of course chronologically that would have to go on the third CD, and adding it there would push at least one Invisible Touch track onto this disc, which would mean splitting up the tracks from that album. Also, “I Wish It Would Rain Down” is quite long, so it might not fit. An easier option would be to pick another Collins song from the 1984-85 period. In that case, rather than choose one of the hits (though I like them well enough, particularly “Take Me Home”), I’d choose “Long Long Way to Go”, my favorite song from No Jacket Required and one of his best songs.

On the third CD, there are some things I might change, though again most of it I’d leave as it is. The three selections from Invisible Touch are fairly obvious ones, though I’d at least consider putting on “Domino”, in which case it’d have to replace “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight”, which is the only one that is nearly as long. I’d consider substituting it for “Invisible Touch” (though unlike many people, I like the latter), but it’s so much longer that there wouldn’t be space. However, as I like “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight”, and “Land of Confusion” is the best of the hits from the album, I could also imagine just keeping the original selections. “The Living Years” was somewhat overplayed at the time and I can understand those who feel it is overly sentimental, but it’s still a good song with emotional depth (not to mention being by far the best known Mike & the Mechanics song), so I’d keep it. As mentioned above, I’d have liked to have seen “I Wish It Would Rain Down” on the set, as it is one of Collins’s best songs, but as it is quite long it might be hard to squeeze on. There’s also the question of what it should replace; as noted above, ideally it would replace “Easy Lover”, but that would require a lot of reshuffling. It could replace “Wake Up Time”, but the latter is a decent song and I can sympathize with Collins’s desire to include a track from a more neglected album rather than yet another hit. “Red Day on Blue Street” is an excellent choice from Still, though there are a few other songs I’d have considered from that album, which is overall the best of Tony Banks’s solo albums.

Then there are the selections from We Can’t Dance. Unlike most fans of the older Genesis material, I don’t dislike songs like “I Can’t Dance” or “Hold on My Heart”; on the other hand, there are quite a few songs I like better just on We Can’t Dance, not to mention on earlier albums. I might still keep “I Can’t Dance”, as it was a pretty big hit and has a sort of quirky charm, and I’d certainly retain “No Son of Mine”. But I’d probably replace “Hold on My Heart”. Ideally I’d replace it with something like “Driving the Last Spike” or maybe “Fading Lights”, but these would probably not fit. Of the other singles off the album, my favorite is “Jesus He Knows Me”, so that’d probably be my choice, but I’d also consider one of the relatively short album tracks like “Living Forever” or even the non-album track “On the Shoreline”. As for the rest of the disc, the remaining selections from Mike & the Mechanics, the Ray Wilson-era Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett, and Tony Banks’s classical ventures all are good choices, though there are other possibilities, particularly for Gabriel. All in all, if I had to redo R-Kive within the 3-CD format, my version would differ very little from the actual one.

Banned Songs and Censorship in Taiwanese Popular Music History (禁歌與歌曲審查對台灣流行音樂的影響)

Last month was the first time since I started this blog that I've missed a month entirely. Aside from being busy with various things (many of them music related), the main reason was that I was away for over half the month on a trip to Eastern Europe. I acquired a number of CDs of local rock and pop music in the countries I visited and maybe when I've had time to listen to them all I'll write about some of them.

Earlier this year I was asked to write an article about censorship and banned songs in Taiwan popular music. To save time I wrote it in English, in which I can write much faster (and better) than in Chinese, and gave it to them to translate. The Chinese version (edited somewhat for length and other requirements) should be published soon, but here's my original English draft. Since the article would ultimately be published in Chinese, I wrote all the artist, composer, lyricist and song names in Chinese, and quotes that were in Chinese I didn't bother to translate either. I've added romanizations of some individuals' names, but I haven't taken the time to translate other things. Many of these same people and songs are mentioned (with romanizations and translations) in
previous articles of mine, such as the one linked to here as well as this one and this one.


For most of the history of popular music in Taiwan, songwriters and performers have had to contend with censorship. This censorship has taken a number of different forms and has been imposed by a number of different agencies, usually but not always governmental ones, and has led to a number of different results, from forcing the re-writing of songs, restricting the outlets available for them to be broadcast and performed, and outright banning of songs from publication. Government censorship was haphazard and mostly reactive for most of the 20th century, but for the last decade of the martial law era it was done systematically. Even after the end of martial law, songs with provocative content would sometimes encounter censorship of some form.

The first known case of song censorship dates back to the era of Japanese rule in Taiwan. A song called 〈街頭的流浪〉 (守真作詞，周玉當作曲，青春美演唱) was released near the end of 1934. It described unemployed men wandering the streets and included lyrics like 「頭家無趁錢 轉來食家己」. Because the colonial government disapproved of this negative (if realistic) portrayal of social problems, the song was banned a little over a month after it was released. Due to the references to its banning in contemporary newspapers and in accounts of the era, 〈街頭的流浪〉 has been called Taiwan’s first banned song. The song itself, however, was largely forgotten afterwards and was only rediscovered this century when a collector came across a copy of the record, allowing music historians to hear for the first time what this almost legendary song actually sounded like.

In the years after Japan went to war with China, restrictions were gradually imposed on cultural activities in Taiwan by the Japanese authorities. By 1939, composers like 鄧雨賢Deng Yuxian were having to help produce songs such as 郷土部隊の勇士から (鄉土部隊之勇士的來信) (later given Hoklo [福佬語] lyrics by 文夏Wen Xia, who performed it under the title 媽媽我也真勇健) to support the war effort, and by the 1940s, the popular music industry had been shut down entirely. But the end of Japanese rule and the takeover by the Nationalist government did not bring an end to censorship of popular music in Taiwan. Instead, a new censorship regime was imposed on the Taiwanese music industry, one that in various guises would remain in place for almost half a century.

One type of song that was immediately banned by the Nationalist government was those that were considered pro-Japanese. This included cover versions of any songs that were regarded as Japanese wartime propaganda songs, even when they had been given new lyrical content, including songs such as 〈沙鴦之鐘〉、〈蘇州夜曲〉、〈支那之夜〉 and 〈媽媽我也真勇健〉. Songs that had already been banned by the Nationalist government in China for being “promoting socialism” 「宣揚社會主義」, such as 〈漁光曲〉and〈義勇軍進行曲〉, or for being “pornographic”「黃色歌曲」 (though the majority of them at most told of romantic flirting with no truly sexual content), such as 〈天涯歌女〉、〈桃李爭春〉、〈桃花江〉、〈三年〉、〈何日君再來〉and〈魂縈舊夢〉, were also banned in Taiwan.

A particularly interesting case was the popular song 〈何日君再來〉. The music for this song was written by劉雪庵 under the pen name 晏如 and the words were written by someone using the pen name 貝林. It was first recorded in Shanghai by 周璇, whose version was released in 1938, and quickly became very popular (there was even a contemporary Hoklo [福佬語] language cover version in Taiwan). Though the song was originally just a love song with no political content, it was banned by several different governments. When the Japanese occupied Shanghai during the war, they banned the song in part because of a performance by ethnic Japanese singer 李香蘭Li Xianglan in which she sang the song while wearing a white dress against a blue background (a combination reminiscent of the Nationalist flag), leading the Japanese authorities to believe the song was expressing a desire for the Nationalists to return to Shanghai. After the war in Taiwan, the song was banned by the Nationalists as leftist, but supposedly also because its title sounded like 「賀日軍再來」, implying a desire for the Japanese army to return to Taiwan. Back in China, the Communists banned it because it could be interpreted as expressing a desire for the Nationalists to come back. So a completely innocuous love song encountered censorship from three entirely different regimes in China and Taiwan.

One of the best known songs to appear in Taiwan in the immediate post-war period was the Hoklo classic 〈補破網〉, written by lyricist 李臨秋Li LinQiu and composer 王雲峰Wang Yunfeng. This song was first released in 1948, just a year after the February 28 incident in which Taiwanese had rebelled against the corrupt Nationalist administration imposed on the island after the departure of the Japanese, only for the rebellion to be bloodily crushed by troops sent over from China. While the song may not have been directly inspired by the need to mend the tears in the fabric of the society, it captured the feeling of the times very well. However, while the Nationalist authorities seemingly didn’t associate the lyrics of the song with the February 28 incident (otherwise they probably would have banned it outright), they considered the original two verses that李臨秋Li Linqiu had written too negative, so they forced him to write a third verse and give the song a happy ending. In later decades, 李臨秋Li Linqiu said he’d rather people didn’t sing the third verse, as he only wrote it under duress.

〈補破網〉was far from the only song to encounter censorship for being too dark. 張邱冬松Zhangqiu Dongsong’s 1946 composition 〈收酒矸〉 was also banned for painting too bleak a picture of poverty in Taiwan, much like 〈街頭的流浪〉 had been under the Japanese. 呂泉生Lu Quansheng’s 1949 composition 〈杯底不可飼金魚〉, which was apparently inspired by ethnic tensions in Taiwan in the wake of the February 28 incident, is another well-known song from this era that was banned at some point. It should be pointed out, however, that for the first couple of decades of the post-war period, much of the censorship tended to be somewhat haphazard, as different songs might be banned by different government authorities, and enforcement was not always consistent. A song might be banned from being broadcast or performed, but not from being published, or it might be banned in all contexts. Some songs were seemingly banned for a period of time, with the authority in question later lifting the ban or simply ceasing enforcement of it. If a song appearing on a record was banned, the disc jockey would often simply mark its title with an “X” or a “禁”. Sometimes the title would be crossed out, and occasionally tape would be placed over the grooves on the record itself so that the song couldn’t be played. In extreme cases, the record would be deliberately scratched. Censorship also applied to performances. Famous Hoklo singer 洪一峰Hong Yifeng tells of an occasion when he was performing the song 〈寶島四季謠〉(葉俊麟作詞，洪一峰作曲) on television and he was cut off when he sang the line 「春天時，草山…」 because the mountain north of Taipei originally named 草山 ["Grass Mountain"] had been renamed 陽明山 [Yangming Mountain] by Chiang Kai-shek, and the old name had been banned.

Songs were often banned or censored by local or provincial authorities (as the Nationalists still claimed sovereignty over China, they maintained separate national and provincial administrations in Taiwan under the pretense that Taiwan was merely one of many provinces), but in the early decades more comprehensive censorship was chiefly the responsibility of the Military Garrison Command [警備總司令部], which was the authority responsible for maintaining martial law and suppressing dissent. Beginning in the 1970s, responsibility for censorship of publications, including records, was transferred to the Government Information Office [新聞局]. Both of these authorities occasionally published books listing banned songs or alternatively songs that had been approved for broadcast.

The censorship in this era was primarily reactive, in that the authorities often only banned songs after their popularity brought them to their attention. Some records were sold locally in huge quantities before (and often even after) being banned, such as the sexually suggestive 高雄Kaohsiung area folk song〈鹽埕區長〉 (楊東敏作詞，郭萬枝改編自牛馬調，麗美、郭萬枝演唱), which was a huge hit in south Taiwan following its release in 1964. But even mainstream pop songs were often banned well after their initial release. For example, the song 〈苦酒滿杯〉 (慎芝作詞，姚讚福作曲), a Mandarin adaptation of a Japanese era popular song titled 〈悲戀的酒杯〉, was first released in the early 1960s. In 1967, however, a cover by 謝雷Xie Lei became massively popular, leading the authorities to ban the song for being to dark and melancholy. Interestingly, while later printings of the 謝雷Xie Lei album originally titled《苦酒滿杯》 were retitled 《男人的眼淚》 after one of the other songs on the album, 〈苦酒滿杯〉 was not actually removed from the album; it was just retitled 〈酒與人生〉. The song 〈向日葵〉, which was one of a number of songs banned for references to the sun, since the well-known Chinese Communist song 〈東方紅〉 referred to Mao Zedong as the sun, was also simply re-titled 〈金黃色的花蕊〉. In some cases, the record company would release a new version of the song which was less objectionable. For example, the hugely popular song 〈今天不回家〉 (諸戈[莊奴]作詞，古月[左宏元]作曲，姚蘇蓉演唱) was banned for its “unhealthy” message, so it was later re-released as 〈今天要回家〉. Penalties for performing or broadcasting banned songs varied as well. In one well known instance, popular singer 姚蘇蓉Yao Surong was performing in a club when the audience repeatedly urged her to perform her very popular but banned hit 〈負心的人〉 (慎芝作詞，猪俣公章作曲). She finally acquiesced, and as a result her “singer’s license” was revoked, forcing her to go abroad to Hong Kong and Southeast Asia to continue her career. Ironically, as she became very popular overseas, this helped to promote Taiwan’s Mandopop industry in Chinese communities outside Taiwan, helping Taiwan to eventually take over from Hong Kong as the main center of the international Mandopop industry.

Language was also an area where censorship played a role. As television became more popular as a medium for broadcasting popular music, the government also used it to promote Mandarin over Taiwanese languages such as Hoklo, Hakka and the various aboriginal languages. The number of non-Mandarin songs that could be broadcast was severely limited, to the extent that the Hoklo popular music industry had declined dramatically by the end of the 1960s and singers such as 洪一峰Hong Yifeng had to go to Japan to continue their careers. Production of Hakka and aboriginal music was less obviously affected by these policies, as it was mostly outside the mainstream industry to begin with.

The government did actively encourage use of Mandarin among aboriginal groups as part of their general policy of “Sinicizing” the aboriginal population, and both censorship and propaganda had some effect on aboriginal songs of the era. As early as 1952, a large scale performance of aboriginal music and dance called 「改良山地歌舞講習會」 was held at 台北市中山堂. 南王前輩歌手李春花 sang an aboriginal song that was popular in the 台東 area, and by the next year the patriotic song 〈台灣好〉 (台東民謠，羅家倫詞、佩芝改編), based on the same melody, had been published in songbooks. It went on to become one of the best known patriotic, anti-Communist songs in Taiwan. Aboriginal songs were also used to spread propaganda messages among the aboriginals themselves, such as Puyuma songwriter Baliwakes [陸森寶]’s 1958 composition 〈當兵好〉 (several of his other songs, such as 民歌手胡德夫唱紅的 〈美麗的稻穗〉, were much more ambivalent about army service by young aboriginal men), or in later years songs like 〈我們都是一家人〉, which was popularized by the China Youth Corps [救國團].

In local performances, aboriginal performers were sometimes told to perform in Mandarin, presumably because the officials observing were suspicious of anything they couldn’t understand. On the other hand, songs performed in aboriginal languages sometimes escaped censorship because of the language barrier. The popular Amis song 〈送情郎到軍中(阿美三鳳)〉 told of a girl accompanying her boyfriend as he reported for army duty. 研究阿美歌謠的孫俊彥教授指出, when the song mentions the national flag flying over the base, the Amis term used literally translates as “red flag”, a description usually associated with the flag of the People’s Republic of China. Most likely if the authorities had understood Amis, this would have led to the song being censored; after all, red was such a sensitive color in this period that the famous Japanese era Hoklo song 〈四季紅〉(Four Seasons of Red) (李臨秋作詞，鄧雨賢作曲) had to be retitled 〈四季謠〉"Four Seasons Melody". While 〈送情郎到軍中〉 escaped censorship, the first attempt to bring the 「山地日語」["Mountain (Aboriginal) Japanese"] song 〈愛愛乾杯〉, popular in the 台東Taidong region since the early post-war period, to a non-aboriginal audience was immediately banned because the 閩南語 version of the song had been given the title 〈爽歪歪〉. It was only a few years later that the song became very popular due to its use in the 布袋戲budaixi production 《史艷文》 under the titles 〈合要好合要爽〉 and 〈醉彌勒〉, though most listeners were unaware of the song’s aboriginal origins.

In 1973, an explanation of the publication law was promulgated that specified 12 reasons for banning a song. These reasons were as follows: ：「違反國策」、「為匪宣傳」、」「抄襲匪曲」、「詞意頹喪」、「內容荒誕」、「意境晦淫」、「曲調狂盪」、「狠暴仇鬥」、「時代反應錯誤」、「文詞粗鄙」、「幽怨哀傷」、「文理不通意識欠明朗」. The following year, a list of 91 banned songs was published by the GIO [新聞局], including songs such as 〈向日葵〉、〈夢醒不了情〉、〈只要為你活一天〉、〈回頭我也不要你〉、〈愛情如水向東流〉、〈一寸相思淚未盡〉、〈今夜你不要走〉、〈交叉線〉、〈一條日光大道〉、〈熱情的沙漠〉 and 〈月亮代表我的心〉. Many of these songs had only been released recently, but others had first been released several years earlier. In many cases, it is not clear in retrospect why a particular song was banned. 〈熱情的沙漠〉 (李潔心作詞，加瀨邦彥、山上路夫作曲，歐陽菲菲演唱) was almost certainly banned because the repeated “ahs” in the song were considered sexually suggestive. But while 〈一條日光大道〉 (陳平作詞，李泰祥作曲) may have been banned because of the reference to the sun, a reporter writing in 1982 when the version of the song by 齊豫Qi Yu and composer 李泰祥Li Taixiang became a hit (the ban apparently having been lifted) stated that the song had been banned because of the “foreign” term “kapa” in the lyrics (the authorities were often uncomfortable with unknown foreign terms, seemingly out of fear that they could have some forbidden meaning, though the same linguistic chauvinism that led them to promote Mandarin over local Taiwanese languages may also have played a role).

In the same period, the government began a deliberate effort to promote songs that it considered “healthy” or “clean” by designating them as 「淨化歌曲」. These songs included patriotic songs like 〈台灣好〉、〈桃花舞春風〉、〈梅花〉 and 〈中華民國頌〉, as well as those that promoted what the government considered healthy values, such as 〈友情〉. Singers were required to sing a number of these songs in order to receive a singer’s license. At least one third of all songs performed on television variety shows were required to be 「淨化歌曲」. This requirement could be a burden for hosts, as the singer 楊祖珺Yang Zujun (aka t.c. yang) discovered when she hosted the folk song program 《跳躍的音符》 in the late 1970s. If her guests couldn’t sing the required quota of 「淨化歌曲」, she had to do it herself. As someone who was not a supporter of the Nationalists (she later became involved in opposition politics), this eventually was too much to endure, leading her to quit the program.

楊祖珺Yang Zujun had perhaps the most experience with censorship of any of the performers involved in the campus folk song movement. In 1979, the Government Information Office instituted a requirement that all songs be submitted to a censorship committee prior to publication (on record or tape) or broadcasting; in other words, the government began taking a proactive approach to censorship, rather than banning songs retroactively. Every week, the committee would review new releases and determine if they were suitable for publication and broadcast. A song might be deemed acceptable for publication but not broadcasting, or the committee might require that changes be made before the song could be approved. The same year that this system was put in place, 楊祖珺Yang Zujun was recording her first solo album. She hoped to record a number of songs by 李雙澤, one of the founders of the folk song movement. The song 〈美麗島〉 (陳秀喜作詩，梁景峰改寫，李雙澤作曲) was approved for publication but not broadcasting, because the committee felt it had a “pro-Taiwan independence flavor” [有台獨意味] (not long after the song would inspire the name of the dissident magazine 《美麗島》, the founders of which organized the march in Kaohsiung that resulted in the 高雄事件). But the other 李雙澤 songs that楊祖珺 had hoped to include on the album, such as 〈少年中國〉 (蔣勳作詩，李雙澤改寫，李雙澤作曲) and 〈老鼓手〉 (梁景峰作詞，李雙澤作曲) were not even approved for publication, the former because it was deemed to “look forward to unification by the Chinese Communists” [「嚮往中共統一號召」] and the latter most likely due to its ironic references to freedom and democracy. So in the end, 〈美麗島〉 was the only 李雙澤 on the album, and the album itself was taken off the market by the record company within a year of release because 楊祖珺Yang Zujun’s increasing social activism had made her “problematic”.

But even seemingly apolitical songs from this era encountered censorship. The innocuous-sounding 〈抉擇〉 (梁弘志作詞作曲，蔡琴演唱) didn’t get approved until the record company’s third attempt (a later observer said it was because of the line 「尋覓雨傘下哪個背影最像妳…啊這真是個無聊的遊戲」). According to a contemporary newspaper report, the record company had expected the song to win approval easily, and had already printed copies of the record which then had to be withdrawn. The extremely popular 〈橄欖樹〉 (三毛[陳平]作詞，李泰祥[楊祖珺]改寫，李泰祥作詞作曲，齊豫演唱) was banned from being broadcast, apparently because the authorities didn’t approve of lines like 「不要問我從哪裡來，我的家在遠方」, though the record still sold very well and the song became李泰祥’s best known composition.

The requirement to have songs approved by the censorship committee caused all sorts of problems for songwriters, record producers, and record companies. Since it was hard to be sure what the censors might object to, even songwriters who tried to self-censor in an effort to ensure approval would still occasionally have problems. Often initial pressings of a record would have to be withdrawn and re-recorded because of an unexpected failure of a key song to be approved, as in the case of 〈抉擇〉. On the other hand, once a song was approved, any unapproved changes made to it afterwards could land the record company in trouble. One example of this was the 1981 release 〈大兵歌〉 (楊立德作詞，羅大佑作曲，許不了、方正演唱). According to a contemporary newspaper report, after receiving complaints that the song was insulting to the military, the GIO [新聞局] claimed that the released version was different from the approved one, and penalized the record company滾石唱片 – though one has to wonder if they may have been using this as an excuse for retracting an approval that they may have regretted in retrospect, as it seems probable that the approved version, which couldn’t have been very different from the final one, would also have been considered objectionable by conservatives.

羅大佑Luo Dayou, the most significant singer-songwriter of the 1980s, also had many problems with censorship, despite the fact that political repression had relaxed somewhat in comparison with the White Terror of previous decades. He released his first album 《之乎者也》 in 1982, and it was an immediate success, appealing to young intellectuals due to its intelligent and socially conscious lyrics and its rock-oriented arrangements. But the album’s title track was initially rejected by the censors and was only approved for publication after 羅大佑Lu Dayou changed the line 「歌曲審查之 通不通過乎 歌曲通過者，翻版盜印也」, which ironically was the one that was considered most objectionable. The original line appeared in versions of the song released outside of Taiwan, and 羅Luo deliberately included it in the liner notes of the Taiwan release. The new line he wrote, 「眼睛睜一隻　嘴巴呼一呼 耳朵遮一遮　皆大歡喜也」, may well have been a slightly sarcastic comment on the censorship as well. But while the new version was approved for publication on record, it was still banned from being broadcast. This got some DJs into trouble, as after 羅Luo performed the song in a concert at the Sun Yatsen Memorial Hall, some of them played it on the radio, mistakenly assuming that any song that was performed there must have been passed censorship (after this the Sun Yatsen Memorial Hall instituted a rule that all songs performed there had to have been approved by the censors). Nor was 〈之乎者也〉the only song on 羅Luo’s debut album that had problems with the censors. 〈戀曲1980〉 also had to be altered slightly before release, with the line 「今夜的歡樂 將是明天創痛的回憶」changed to 「今夜的歡樂 將是明天永恆的回憶」(in concert performances 羅Luo sang the original lyric).

羅大佑Luo Dayou’s later albums also had censorship issues. 〈亞細亞的孤兒〉, one of the key tracks on his second album 《未來的主人翁》 (1983), was only gotten past the censors due to the addition of the dedication 「紅色的污泥—致中南半島難民」 in order to make the censors think the song was about Nationalist refugees in Southeast Asia, when in fact it was about Taiwan, a much more sensitive topic. 羅Luo’s third album 《家》(1984) had even more songs that failed to meet the censors’ approval, including 〈吾鄉印象〉 (吳晟作詞)、〈耶穌的另一個名字 〉 and the sarcastic 〈超級市民〉. According to the account in his book 《昨日遺書》, even some of the lyrics that 羅Luo originally wrote for the “Do They Know It’s Christmas” / “We Are the World” style multi-artist sing-along 〈明天會更好〉 (羅大佑、張大春、許乃勝、李壽全、邱復生、張艾嘉、詹宏志作詞，羅大佑作曲) met with disapproval.

羅大佑Luo Dayou’s friend and fellow songwriter 侯德健Hou Dejian also had problems with the censors. In late 1982, a few months after 羅Luo released his debut album, 侯德健Hou Dejian released a solo album titled 《龍的傳人續篇》 which also included several songs that explored social issues in some depth. One of these, 〈未來的主人翁〉 (different from 羅大佑Luo Dayou’s song of the same name) took a critical look at education, and perhaps unsurprisingly was not approved by the censors. Due in part to his frustration with censorship (though the sort of Chinese nationalistic idealism that had led him to write 〈龍的傳人〉 no doubt also played a role), in mid-1983 侯德健Hou Dejian went to China via Hong Kong, making him a traitor in the eyes of the Nationalist government in Taiwan. His song 〈酒干倘賣無〉, which featured prominently in the movie 《打錯車》, was removed from Taiwan releases of 蘇芮Su Rui’s accompanying hit album released in June of 1983 (though it appeared on Hong Kong releases and pirated cassette copies in Taiwan). In the liner notes to 齊豫Qi Yu’s album 《你是我所有的回憶》, released later that year, the lyrics to the title track were credited to the song’s composer 李泰祥Li Taixiang, but years later 齊豫Qi Yu revealed that they had been written by 侯德健Hou Dejian, and 李泰祥Li Taixiang had been credited to avoid censorship.

Throughout the 1980s, songs on albums were marked with the number of the meeting of the censorship committee at which it had been approved (such as「審148」 or 「178次」). By 1988, in 320 meetings the committee had reviewed over twenty thousand songs, about one-sixth of which had not been approved. Over nine hundred songs that were approved for publication on record were not approved for broadcasting. While by the mid-1980s most songs seem to have been approved without much difficulty (in part due to self-censorship by the songwriters and conservative choices of material by producers and record companies), there were always a few that had problems. For instance, the first two lines of 張艾嘉Zhang Aijia’s 1985 hit〈忙與盲〉(袁瓊瓊、張艾嘉作詞，李宗盛作曲) from the album of the same name had to be changed from 「曾有一次晚餐和一張床在什麼時間地點和那個對象」 to 「曾有一次晚餐和一個夢 在什麼時間地點和那些幻想」, though the lyric sheet showed the original version. But some songs in this period remained outside the censorship system altogether. For example, as Mandarin became widely spoken by aboriginal people, “aboriginal Mandarin songs” 「山地國語歌」 like 〈可憐落魄人〉 and 〈三分鐘的愛〉 appeared. 〈可憐落魄人〉 was brought to Taipei by 知本卑南族歌手陳明仁 Puyuma singer Chen Mingren and became hugely popular among non-aboriginal audiences in Taiwan and even in Southeast Asia. Copies of the song on tape and record sold in the hundreds of thousands in 1981 and 1982, mostly through night markets and similar places, far out-selling the mainstream records of the time. But the song was never submitted to the censorship committee, and with lyrics like 「你可以戲弄我 也可以呀利用我」, it certainly would not have been approved. Indeed, this song was specifically criticized in newspapers of the time, as was 〈三分鐘的愛〉, but the authorities seemingly were unable to do anything to stem its popularity. Many popular Hoklo songs of the era like 沈文程Shen Wencheng's〈心事誰人知〉 and 陳小雲Chen Xiaoyun's〈舞女〉 were also sold mainly through night markets and likewise remained mainly outside the system.

Martial law was finally ended in Taiwan in 1987, and most political restrictions were relaxed. The GIO song censorship system was not finally ended until 1990, but songs tended to be approved more easily than had been the case even a few years earlier. But songs on sensitive subjects could still face censorship. The influential 黑名單工作室Blacklist Workshop album《抓狂歌》, released in 1989, included the song 〈民主阿草〉 (王華作詞，王明輝作曲), which commented on the political atmosphere of contemporary Taiwan. Due to the very direct and sometimes sarcastic observations in this and other songs on the album, the mainstream television and radio stations wouldn't play any of the album, though it was not officially banned. One of the last albums to face significant censorship was the 1990 album 《把我自己掏出來》 by punk rocker 趙一豪Zhao Yihao. The songs 〈把我自己掏出來〉、〈改變〉 and〈震動〉 had to be re-recorded as〈把我自己收回來〉、〈這機天〉 and〈創造〉 respectively due to perceived sexual content and similar issues.

With the end of official censorship, artists and songwriters were freer to express themselves more directly about controversial political and social issues. As a contemporary newspaper article noted, albums such as 林強Lim Giong’s 《育樂世界》 and 黃舒駿Huang Shujun’s 《我是誰》, both released in 1994, reflected the increased creative space open to artists. But while the government no longer censored songs, that didn’t mean censorship had ceased to exist. For instance, both of the videos for 黃舒駿Huang Shujun’s 《我是誰》 encountered censorship from television stations, particular the video for 〈見怪不怪〉. 中視編審組The CTV review committee rejected both the video for 〈我是誰〉 and the one for〈見怪不怪〉, though most of their specific objections referred to the latter. Likewise, while 衛視音樂台 accepted the video for 〈我是誰〉 with minor changes, they asked for numerous changes to the video for 〈見怪不怪〉 and even changes to the lyrics, so in the end 黃舒駿Huang Shujun just gave up hope of having it broadcast. In the end, neither 《育樂世界》nor 《我是誰》 sold well compared to the artists’ previous albums, in large part because of the relatively conservative taste of most Taiwanese popular music fans. While many reasons could be cited for this conservativism, one distinct possibility is that this was a lingering legacy of decades of censorship, as most Taiwanese listeners had in a sense been trained to prefer a narrow range of music and lyrical content. While many young music fans of today are completely unaware of Taiwan’s history of censorship, it was without question a major factor in the evolution of popular music in Taiwan, and something that anyone who wants to understand the background of Taiwan’s music scene has to be aware of.