TS: Aretha Franklin's "Freeway of Love" vs. James Brown's "Living In America"

freeway by a mile

Never liked either of these, guess they both remind me of high school in a bad way, but I really dislike this JB song, so Aretha.

^^^

I figure ppl generally talk about these songs in the way they talk about "Kokomo"

Only thing interesting to me about these two now is how much they reflect the mid-80s sonically, big money records sounded very weird around that time.

A reluctant vote for "Freeway." The Aretha song I still love from this period was the George Michael duet "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)", but I guess that was 1987?

Thinking about it more, a lot of records sounded pretty crappy in 1985. REM's worst-sounding record, The Replacements worst-sounding record. For very different reasons than stuff like Aretha Franklin and Dire Straits, of course.

1985 was the sonic black hole in the middle of the decade.

Even pop metal was affected (Ratt, Motley Crue and Dokken's worst-sounding albums are all from 1985).

I used to sit and religously watch Aretha's video solely for the glimpse of the big Uniroyal tire on I-94.

1985 was a bit of a black hole for Hip-Hop, too.

Radio!

God, I knew that was coming.

Or, La Di Da Di!, for that matter.

Percentage wise, still a black hole...

"Freeway Of Love", but both represent more or less the pinnacle of both's entire career and "Living In American" is more surprisingly good for James Brown than "Freeway Of Love" is for Aretha.

In Aretha's case "Who's Zoomin' Who" was better even.

*smdh*

Who's Zoomin' Who is a decent attempt at a Private Dancer-Can't Slow Down multi-single crssover, but the first two singles were the crassest (and if you think THESE are crass, check out Aretha's duet with Peter Wolf). "Another Night" is the best of the lot.

Freeway at least has a groove. Livin' is pretty turgid "dance" rock (and so far below the pinnacle of JB's career that only Geir could make such a claim.)

Is Nobody going to go with "Livin" ?

James Brown sounds ALIVE on it. Aretha is just singing it because she has to, from the sound of it.

Both performers project that phony bizzer enthusiasm so prevalent in the mid eighties.

'Living in America' is shameless hackwork, a baldfaced attempt to produce a rock&soul rip-off of "Born in the USA" and the fact that it was the highest charting single of Brown's career is one of the many reasons I have no faith in the wisdom of popular taste. The production is obnoxious, Brown's vocals are among the least interesting of his career up to that point, and I don't hear anybody performing on that record with anything resembling either commitment or intelligent craft. But like 'Rocky IV,' wherein Brown appeared and performed this song, the song is such an ideal sociological document of its cultural moment that I love it anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4PzkxS1OkY&feature=related

Yes, the thing from Rocky really made me WANT to vote for Living, but I think Freeway is a more fun song.

Or I did when I was six years old, anyway.

Living in America, and I have no idea why--they are both awful

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjM8Qn5XmAE

Whatever bad you might say about "Living In America", this redeems it entirely. Replacing the city list with a type of hernia list = absolute genius.

despite that I voted for Aretha. Is the reference here to a pink cadillac part of the 80s trend of Elvis references in pop songs that we've talked about on some other thread? (I'm also thinking of Bruce's "Pink Cadillac" from about the same time, at least the single "rock" version). I can't find that thread---using ILX search for "Elvis" is dreadful since there are far more Elvis Costello threads than Elvis Presley threads; guess that's a UK thing?

Replacing the city list with a type of hernia list = absolute genius.

Not to mention the "I feel bad!" outro...

Who's Zoomin' Who is a decent attempt at a Private Dancer-Can't Slow Down multi-single crssover, but the first two singles were the crassest (and if you think THESE are crass, check out Aretha's duet with Peter Wolf). "Another Night" is the best of the lot.

"I Knew Your Were Waiting (For Me)" is best of all, but that is largely because of George Michael.

Freeway of Love - it just sounds better coming out of car speakers with the windows rolled down on a warm summer day. You don't have to be on a freeway necessarily, but it doesn't hurt.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.