Blogging the Rolling Stone Top 500: #500 - "Touch" by The Eurythmics

Rolling Stone magazine put out a list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, which is available here. This is not news.

I came up with the brilliant idea to expand my musical horizons by attempting to listen to the entire list via Napster's all-you-can-eat music service and write down my thoughts. Since the albums at the top of the list are all fairly familiar to me, I've decided to start at the bottom, with #500, "Touch" by The Eurythmics.

Having listened to Touch twice in a row now, I have to say I'm less than impressed. The vocals are definitely the strongest point here, with Annie Lennox singing out powerfully and with an impressive amount of range, and the songwriting has it's moments too such as on "Here Comes the Rain Again" or "Who's That Girl", but those strengths aren't enough entirely overcome the albums glaring weakness which is that many of the songs are simply boring. "Regrets", "Cool Blue", "Paint a Rumour", all of 'em are simply too long, too repetitive and not interesting enough despite Annie's attempts to liven them up.

I understand that this was groundbreaking music for it's time, and I tried hard not to hold the 1984 synth vibe against the album since, hey, it wasn't cliche yet when they did it, but I think that this album just doesn't wear well over time. The music simply isn't very interesting or moving. It wears a little better 22 years after the fact than a lot of the 1980's synth pop does, but it's definitely not an album I'd want to own or listen to with any regularity. I know those Eurythmics fans out there exist, but on the strength of "Touch", I'm not one of them.

I'm fairly certain that RS included this one more because of it's cultural impact than it's musical content, but who knows?