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It is 1979, you are (in)arguably the artist of the Seventies, having scored #1 hit after #1 hit, and a slew of top-charting records. After four masterpieces made inside of a two-year period (Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness First Finale), you take two years to record and release what may have been the best of them all, Songs in the Key of Life, a double-LP with nine charting singles, a bonus disc and nary a bum track in the bunch.
So what do you do next?
You take some time off and return in a big way by...scoring a film about how plants have feelings. (And yes, it was released, as my fifth-grade science class went to see it -- G-rated, it had Stevie singing on a hill, electrodes hooked up to vegetation and brine shrimp to prove plants can sense pain and, incongruously, a naked woman showering)
How was the music? Well, there are some pop songs, most impressively "Outside My Window" and "Send One Your Love," the latter of which may well be the greatest Hallmark ad soundtrack you'll ever hear and is also something of a leitmotif here. There's also a fair amount of sentimental singing about plants living life on the DL.
As for the "movie music" that so confused fans at the time, there's quite a bit of the most delicate electronic music Stevie would ever do, much of it featuring the GX-1 "Dream Machine" strings that he used to remarkable effect on Key of Life as well as no small amount of harmonica.
Then there are the vocal tracks that defy categorization, such as the swinging, scatty "Venus Fly Trap and the Bug" and an out-and-out disco number that may or may not have been recorded live and sounds at times like a Broadway audition. Best of all may be "Race Babbling," a big, electronic vocoder and drum machine jam that goes on for nine minutes, is amazing, and has no place whatsoever on this record that I can discern.
Like it or not, there's little question that Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants was essentially the beginning of the end of "classic Stevie" -- the point at which he allows his talent for balladry begin to run amok, focuses more on feel and texture than melody and starts down a spiritual rabbit hole that is quirky-bordering-on-deeply-weird. All that said, it's never boring and contains quite a bit of impressive music nonetheless.
What say ILM of this sometimes quite enjoyable but still deeply perplexing, epoch-ending work?
― Naive Teen Idol, Monday, 2 June 2008 01:06 (sixteen years ago)
This has always been one epoch-ending work I've meant to buy and always forget.
Is it so epoch-ending though? Hotter Than July and The Original Musiquarium, The Woman in Red, In Square Circle -- all huge pop hits. If anything, it defines his Major Artist status: every Major Artist releases A Difficult Album.
I see it as his Tusk: a big seller, smaller by his usual numbers, but didn't stifle his commercial standing, as subsequent records proved.
(This is by way of saying that Stylus should have gotten around to re-evaluating this one)
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 2 June 2008 01:22 (sixteen years ago)
Pretty good, and there was at least 1.5 great albums after it, to my ears.
― Eric H., Monday, 2 June 2008 01:22 (sixteen years ago)
This one's sort of like Fulfillingness First Finale in that I usually give it a much closer listen due to me not wanting to actually listen to it as often. Or, at least, that was true until I discovered that FFF was actually my favorite Stevie album or thereabouts.
― Eric H., Monday, 2 June 2008 01:23 (sixteen years ago)
It is weird that, unlike Time Fades Away, Here, My Dear, Tusk, or Donna Summer it hasn't been the subject of much revisionism.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 2 June 2008 01:25 (sixteen years ago)
That's probably because there just really are a few too many tracks that sound like music you'd hear in a boho gift store selling bamboo windchimes, et al, though the juxtaposition of the "Voyage to India" stuff with, say, "Race Babbling" is intriguing.
― Eric H., Monday, 2 June 2008 01:29 (sixteen years ago)
Both this album and Hotter Than July suffer a little bit from a strangely tinny mix. July is a much lighter listen, though, so it sort of matches the album's tone. (Arguably, I'd say, it soars because of it.) Here, though, I've always thought something like "A Seed's A Star" struggles to make the impression it ought to as a peppy uptempo disco number.
― Eric H., Monday, 2 June 2008 01:31 (sixteen years ago)
I really want to get a grip on this album, and kind of should be able to with my proggy taste, but I quite cannot. The songs just don't work. It's a nice try, but it failed. And I guess following one ambitious double album with another is rarely a good idea.
― Geir Hongro, Monday, 2 June 2008 07:45 (sixteen years ago)
I used to consider it something like Stevie's own Another Green World - a record you could leave playing on the stereo in the daytime for your plants to listen to (dance to?) while you're at work.
― Myonga Vön Bontee, Monday, 2 June 2008 16:53 (sixteen years ago)
Incidentally, why in hell would TPTB commission a blind person to compose a film soundtrack, for chrissakes?
― Myonga Vön Bontee, Monday, 2 June 2008 16:55 (sixteen years ago)
somehow I never heard this til this afternoon…it's like he said "I wanna make a yes record"… or I always used to think he was a lot like Todd R, and this is like his Initiation…
― veronica moser, Tuesday, 25 April 2017 20:19 (eight years ago)
not as good as mort garson's "plantasia" (concerto for philodendron and pothos starts out sounding like some zelda shit) but i still love it. one of the few '70s stevie concert boots out there is from a show he played promoting the album- played the whole record and a bunch of hits besides. "race babbling" is a disco jam for the ages. "initiation" is a good comparison!
― increasingly bonkers (rushomancy), Tuesday, 25 April 2017 20:38 (eight years ago)
you want the complete movie? you got the complete movie..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i-6fT0jF-rg
― piscesx, Wednesday, 26 April 2017 10:11 (eight years ago)
"outside my window" <3
― J. Sam, Wednesday, 26 April 2017 13:50 (eight years ago)
songs in the key of life is not the best of them all, the four are untouchable
plants does need a reassessment, preferably an aggressively perverse one: my ancient vinyl copy is super-badly scratched but possibly there are other ways to access it these days
― mark s, Wednesday, 26 April 2017 13:55 (eight years ago)
Does anybody know the tune at 37.30 on that doc...it's amazing...not on the soundtrack album I don't think...
― X-Prince Protégé (sonnyboy), Wednesday, 26 April 2017 14:35 (eight years ago)
That youtube link appears to have audio overdubbed to throw off audio-trawling copyright bots. Here's a better one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD1apbw8rgI
― insidious assymetrical weapons (Eric H.), Wednesday, 26 April 2017 14:39 (eight years ago)