Published on Jul 21, 2004
Opening the mail is fun these days. The volume of unsolicited
discs has risen to the point where I’m pleasantly surprised by
something that comes across my desk just about every week. This
week’s unexpected — and very guilty — pleasure is Billy Ocean’s
Ultimate Collection.
Let me be clear about something. There are things I love in the
world — my wife and kids, baseball, writing, hot fudge, the beach,
etc. And there are things I hate in the world — lyrically
lightweight, musically antiseptic and over-produced top 40 pop
music.
Okay, I’m sure there must be other things I hate; that just
happens to be the one that comes to mind right now. So just exactly
why didn’t I hate this album?
In many ways, ’80s popstar Billy Ocean represents everything I
despised about much of that era’s hit music — the reliance on
electronic effects over real instruments, the use of gaudy
production tricks to dress up inconsequential songs, the
way-over-the-top sappiness of the ballads.
This disc is full of all of the above, and yet I found my head
bobbing along to the music more than once. Part of that is the pure
nostalgia effect of hearing a song like “Get Outta My Dreams, Get
Into My Car” (“beep, beep” go the background vocals) for the first
time in 15 years. I mean (gulp), it
is kinda catchy. And “Caribbean Queen (No More Love On The
Run)”? Maybe even more than “Jump” or “When Doves Cry” or “Like A
Virgin,” that song
is 1984. Hearing it again is an instant flashback.
A bit about Mr. Ocean, nee Lesley Sebastian Charles. Born in
Trinidad, Billy moved with his family to London at a young age and
grew up mixing calypso music with Otis Redding and the Beatles (why
he ended up looking like Billy Dee Williams, but singing more like
Phil Collins than any of the above, is one of life’s mysteries). It
was while working the night shift at a Ford factory that he finally
got his first break and began recording a string of increasingly
successful singles.
The style Ocean eventually settled on could best be described as
soul music for yuppies. Smooth, clean, crisp, synthesizer-laden
production of ultralight pop songs infused with just enough rhythm
and soul to keep them from simply floating away. This music has
more sheen and less depth than freshly waxed linoleum. And
yet…
Even “There’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)” and “Suddenly,” a
pair of top 40 ballads with enough saccharin each to kill a moose,
have a certain undeniable momentum to them. Ocean does have a very
pleasant voice, and is a master at selling these songs — at a
certain point while listening to this album, I began to imagine him
auctioning Frigidaires by the truckload somewhere north of the
Arctic Circle.
Billy Ocean’s appeal — as clearly identified right there in the
liner notes to this disc — is the “sheer musical exuberance” he
brings to his work. I may have a hard time getting into this music,
but Billy doesn’t… he is so into it he can sell the dumbest
lyric (“Love Zone”), the cheesiest ’80s keyboard tones (“The Colour
Of Love”), or the most trite arrangement (“Mystery Lady”) with the
purity of his enthusiasm for the song. He believes, and that makes
you want to.
I can’t give this a higher rating simply because I detest this
particular genre so — but I can at least give Billy Ocean credit
for giving these songs his all. It’s more than a lot of his popstar
colleagues manage, and it stamps him as what he is — a pro, and a
pretty damn successful one at that. Good on ya, mate.