Julian Lennon - Valotte

Like many people the first time I heard "Valotte" I was blown away hearing something so beautiful and mature from someone who sounded very much like his lionized father. It was a comparison that would be mentioned whenever the song was played on the radio. It was a great song. The follow up single "Too Late for Goodbyes" and the video for it were pretty cool, but it was the title track that held all the promise of great things to come.

I didn't buy the album, but I heard it once at a friends place. It was more a cursory listen than anything, and it didn't make much of an impression. Reading up on the album now many of the reviewers were treating this like it was something released by Toto. They thought the music was too much like his father's later work, and that while his album was nicely produced, it felt old man and kind of limp. Of course these are poor paraphrases, but the general sense was this was a giant pile of "meh".

There's no business like show business.

You may be asking why am I even writing about this then if it's just a giant steaming bag of dog waste? Why not? Time is a strange thing, and while Julian's career never took off despite the promising start this album was always a kind of question mark for me. "Valotte" was a wonderful song, and when I found the album in a dollar bin waiting for a little love and restoration I figured I was at least getting a couple of good songs for my buck.

The album was produced by Phil Ramone who had won Grammy awards for his work with Paul Simon, and Billy Joel so the guy knew a thing or three about making records. But those were guys from the 70s - where was the feeling of urgency and youthful energy a debut album often generated? He was an odd choice to produce a young Julian Lennon, and while Phil's production gave the album a lush feel it was different than most of the other music I was listening to in 1984. I know I'm kind of shitting on this one, but I have to admit his touch on the title track was amazing, and I cannot imagine it sounding any different. It's possible he didn't have a lot to work with from Julian, as you can only polish something if there's something to, well, polish (I really wanted to avoid the "polish a turd" thing, as it was completely unfair).

Having said that, listening to the album now with the benefit of a few decades of history the album is actually pretty good and has aged into itself. The two big singles are still the best two songs, and it's weird to think Sam Peckinpah managed to make not one, but two music videos where nothing blew up or was shot. A song like "Space" is still really cool but it's very much in the vein of his dad's
work, it calls to mind "#9 Dream". Given the similarities in Julian's vocal delivery it's a catch-22. So why not just lean into it here and there? He'd be damned if he did, and damned if he didn't. Honestly he did a great job in balancing between the two.

Who knows what might have been if the songs had been given to a different producer who could have left a few more rough edges and giving the songs more of a sense of urgency instead of smoothing everything out and aging the effort into something so middle of the road that even the chicken couldn't be bothered trying to cross as there'd be no point.

Despite all this, I find myself playing the album every so often. He was smart enough to sequence the album where each side started off with a really good song, and despite all my bitching it was a pretty good album, but this was about as far as he'd go.