Tony Hadley
Passing Strangers

Each of us, my dear ones, cultivates their age as they see fit.

Some are modest when young, and some are dictatorially in love with their ideas as adults. And then there's the opposite.

Well: I prefer the opposite. It’s probably the classic "be an incendiary when young and a firefighter when old," or being stupid unless extremists at twenty or still extremists at forty...

In short...: all of this to say that I like an album, as always being a bit ashamed of it, but fundamentally enjoying it to the fullest as I've learned to do over the past few years.

In short, since I totally and definitively lost my shame, someone might say my dignity, I realized that Armostrong is an adult love just as Trane is a necessary phase of late adolescence (the argument also applies, for example, to Puzo and Kerouack).

And Tony Hadley and his Spandau Ballet were one of the voices on the radio of my adolescence. I listened to them in secret, like the Durans, and I liked them even if I would never admit it, to myself or to others. I was all about Prince and Tom Waits. But deep down the tear for "Through The Barricades" always fell back then as it still does: relentless, confessed felon, happy and full of passion.

Today Tony Hadley is a handsome overweight guy, certainly dyed, endowed with a splendid voice and a splendid ability to use it. He made a handful of pleasant records in the "post-Spands" era; he hasn't yet had a reunion worthy of the name (the cousin Durans did... and profitably), and he recently made the ultimate pandering album.

Error or stroke of brilliance already traversed by other greats of the pop-rock past (Garfunkel, Stewart...), Hadley tackled the great classics of the American songbook.

With the inevitable musical effect and a pumping orchestra behind him.

Horrible and, naturally, beautiful.

Question from an educated adolescent (the uneducated adolescent listens to Pausini or Tokio Hotel, brays and shakes their hips, is very happy, and has no concerns): but what's the purpose of such an album; weren't the Spands enough to hurt our ears; couldn't he have just retired...?

This album serves no purpose, my dear ones. It serves absolutely no purpose. Like a beautiful painting with nothing new, a nice plate of tortelli not particularly experimental, innovative, nor even too stellar, but simply and normally, good. Like an excellent Gutturnio, which doesn’t even attempt for a second to be a noble Barolo or a pandering Brunello...

Here Tony (let's do like the Shorty with Blair, let's call him by name, with an ideal pat on the back) does his thing, and he does it brilliantly: he sings.

The orchestra pumps as God would always want. In one track, there's almost a perfect clone of BB King throwing down a nice Gibson 335 solo, just as God Taste would like.

In short: lots of quality.

And lots of wonderful uselessness.

And we find ourselves flapping around dancing in the room, humming along with Tony "I'm just a gigolo".

And we're even happy about the years that go by.