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Just listening to my double CD of Simply Red (Greatest Hits) and by no means is he my favourite artist, but is he like Stevie Wonder, in the sense that his early stuff was brilliant, but his later stuff ventured more to 'middle of the road' dross??? e.g. Just listened to 'You Got It' and 'It's Only Love' - decent early hits, then poor songs like 'Fairground' and 'Air That I Breathe ' - a cover of The Hollies - came on and thought, does his later stuff get worse. I personally feel his early stuff is quite credible.
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The answer is yes.
As do most groups over time.
The well runs dry.
Very few artists can maintain that creativity level.
Of course it's a catch-22.
You either branch out to widen your audience, with the risk of losing the original, or do what you did, thereby becoming stale.
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well i only really like Holding back the years
So I'd say yes - his early stuff is better than his later stuff
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I'd add into the mix the fact that they definitely pursued commercial success, so that may have impacted on the quality of their output.
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I think his best albums are 'Picture Book' & 'Stars'. If you're only listening to his 'Greatest Hits' album then its not really fair to judge without hearing the actual albums IMO. For instance, I hate 'Fairground' with a passion but the rest of the 'Life' album is very good plus on the 'Blue' album (which you mentioned the Hollies cover), there is an outstanding cover of Neil Young's 'Mellow My Mind' which is probably one of my favourite tracks by him.
[video=youtube;l22C25TKa3I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l22C25TKa3I[/video]
