Supertramp
Breakfast in America

THE REVIEW

In the blissful seventies of alternative song contests and festivals, a drastic distinction was made between commercial music and committed music. The former was considered the worst that could end up on a record, and the latter the best. This led to the curious reversal whereby music that sold was necessarily awful, and music that didn't sell was "necessarily" good (as if it were impossible that there was music no one bought simply because it was bad). This was a belief that pop criticism (and consequently the readers) leaned on for several years. And while some absolute duds were praised only because they could boast of selling 10 copies, other excellent albums were poorly judged simply because they were guilty of having sold a lot: "Dark Side Of The Moon", for example. Even if the album was accused of "betraying" many of the Floydian premises of the Barrett era, surely the fact that it sold millions of copies worsened its situation...

The scenario lasted for a while, then the absolute distinctions between commercial and committed music began to fade, and simultaneously, it started to be believed that it was possible to make songs that could dominate the charts but also of excellent quality. A decisive push in this direction came from an album in the latter half of the decade, which represents, along with Michael Jackson's "Thriller", the aforementioned "Dark Side", and a few others, the perfect blend between commercially and artistically valid: "Breakfast in America" by Supertramp. Supertramp, who, first and foremost, could not boast any credibility in the rock domain. Born thanks to the substantial funding of a billionaire fan, for at least a decade, they had collected unsold records and concerts avoided by the public like the plague, then suddenly found themselves at the top of the charts with their fourth album ("Crime Of The Century") and a couple of singles ("Dreamer", "Bloody Well Right"). All dismissed as "commercial rubbish" by militant critics. But something was changing: when "Breakfast" was released in '77, the matter couldn't be dismissed simply by shrugging and putting Popol Vuh on the turntable: the record sold millions, but, darn it, what great songs it contained!

Rarely had an album contained so many ideas and such good ones: in the end, it had to be admitted: "The Logical Song", "Take The Long Way Home", "Goodbye Stranger", and the others managed to perfectly condense a certain pompous rock made in the USA (but without ever exceeding) and certain bright British pop, all in a vaguely progressive key that tended to stretch the tracks and give space to the instruments... really good stuff: listen to it now, it still works! But these are difficult balances to find, and impossible to maintain: neither Rick Davies nor Roger Hodgson succeeded in the feat. Creating just one album at this level had to suffice for their careers: they consoled themselves by looking at their bank accounts and thinking about how many colleagues could never achieve such a feat in their whole life.