Rickie Lee Jones - Pop Pop (1991)

Rickie Lee Jones - Pop Pop

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The late career standards album has long been an oft repeated trope among musicians running out of steam. It is the sign of an artist admitting to their audience that they no longer write any interesting music or at least don’t want too, but still want to take their money. The infamous Duran Duran album Thank You and Eric Clapton’s Old Sock (complete with embarrassing selfie pasted on to the cover) just reinforce this image of the washed up money grab. Few of these albums deliver any semblance of the emotional connection or artistic resonance that earned these musicians their fan base in the first place. Pop Pop, on the other hand, is ingeniously tailored to suit Rickie Lee Jones as a singer and proves that her talents lie not just in her songwriting but in her arrangements. The album pulls many old Tin Pan Alley standards into focus and through Jones’ performance and style; they begin to sound natural and personal. Schmaltzy entrees “My One and Only Love” and "I’ll Be Seeing You” are delivered with the straightforward coffee shop beatnik sensibility that Jones built her fan base on. These songs are familiar but they sound uniquely Rickie, and I would challenge anyone unfamiliar with these tracks to distinguish this album as a covers record among the originals in her repertoire. Comparatively, she does avoid the romping stream of conscious tracks that frequent her previous albums in favor of providing direct mood music. Mood music that works just as well when you sit down and listen to what she is repeating. Pop Pop does what it does best, it is true to the nature of a standard, while offering some contortion to make Hendrix’s” Up From the Skies” match Rickie’s style. It is arrestingly beautiful to see this collection of songs smartly integrated into a succinct body of work, one that blends in perfectly to Jones’ discography.

~7.5

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