Published on May 3, 1999
In a sense, calling
Something For Everybody a Baz Luhrmann album isn’t entirely
correct. The Australian director might have compiled this group of
songs (which have been featured in his works), but to the best of
my knowledge, he doesn’t play one note on this album.
What Luhrmann has succeeded in doing – besides creating this
decade’s spoken-word hit (more on that later) – is put together the
ultimate sampler of music crossing all genres. This is the kind of
album that reviewer Eric E5S16 would have killed to review; Eric’s
tastes in music run the entire gamut, and the playlist for his
dream radio station is proof of that. If Luhrmann has a flaw, it’s
that this disc might be too eclectic for many people’s tastes.
If you pick this up hoping to hear what Luhrmann has done with
the original versions of songs, more often than not, you’re going
to be disappointed. It’s rare when the original artist performs the
track in question (such as “Lovefool,” which isn’t performed by The
Cardigans, but by Snooper), and often, these remakes leave a lot to
be desired. On the other hand, some new takes on songs are quite
interesting, such as the new versions of “Aquarius/Let The Sunshine
In” and “Time After Time”.
But there are a few original artists left on some of these
tracks, such as Doris Day (“Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps”). Also,
Luhrmann dares to throw a serious curve ball at the listener by
including one operatic selection (“Che Gelida Manina” from
La Boheme) and a selection from Gustav Holst’s “The
Planets”. Both of these tracks impressed me; the former because I
am no fan of opera, the latter because I have always been
apprehensive about sitting down to fully explore this particular
classical work.
One other track that stood out was the “High Heels Mix” of
“Happy Feet”, a song that gets new life kicked into it. You might
not think that a song originally recorded in 1930 would be fitting
to be played in the clubs these days; this mix takes care of
that.
And then, there’s the smash hit “Everybody’s Free (To Wear
Sunscreen)”, the first spoken-word smash I can think of since Paul
Hardcastle’s “19” in the ’80s. This song reminds me a lot of
“Desiderata” by Les Crane (a song I tried to find for my father for
three years, I kid you not). Both songs feature an inspirational
message that the listener can interpret their own way, both songs
feature backing tracks fitting for their time periods… both will
always have some cult following.
All this said… the track doesn’t impress me that much. The
speech is good (and the story behind the speech is even better),
but with all due respect to Mary Schmich of the
Chicago Tribune (who wrote the speech for a column), I
honestly don’t understand why this song has taken off on the
charts. Oh, well. To each their own.
In the end,
Something For Everybody is a decent enough work, though
there are one or two points on the album where it’s a bit difficult
to plow through the material. I guess any sampler runs the risk of
falling into that pitfall; it’s what happens when an artist tries
to provide something for… whoops, almost fell into redundancy
there.