What's weird about this article is I remember it all, but it all feels like it came from different eras. I never got into Paul Weller (and I enjoy The Jam better than any of his other stuff). The Bjork and REM albums were massive parts of my teens, and Take That were the 'always on tv and the radio' band. It just feels like it all happened at different times.
Thank you for articulating something I've never quite been able to about Weller's solo career. As far as I'm concerned, his work in the 80s is as incandescent as a pop music career gets—the visual style, the lightning-speed artistic evolution, the restless reinvention, but primarily the nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic resulting in songs of the highest caliber across the entire ouevre. His first solo album was a continuation of that striving toward something he hadn't done before, but with Wild Wood—and what came after—I felt like he was repeating himself, which is why I lost interest in his solo work at the same time that most people seemed to develop the greatest fondness for it.
I liked the Jam, but I loved The Style Council. I wrote about them earlier this year and posted the article on twitter, where Weller provided to nitpick it. Seemed on brand, tbh...
Paul Weller takes Britpop in a new direction [July 18, 1993]
What's weird about this article is I remember it all, but it all feels like it came from different eras. I never got into Paul Weller (and I enjoy The Jam better than any of his other stuff). The Bjork and REM albums were massive parts of my teens, and Take That were the 'always on tv and the radio' band. It just feels like it all happened at different times.
Thank you for articulating something I've never quite been able to about Weller's solo career. As far as I'm concerned, his work in the 80s is as incandescent as a pop music career gets—the visual style, the lightning-speed artistic evolution, the restless reinvention, but primarily the nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic resulting in songs of the highest caliber across the entire ouevre. His first solo album was a continuation of that striving toward something he hadn't done before, but with Wild Wood—and what came after—I felt like he was repeating himself, which is why I lost interest in his solo work at the same time that most people seemed to develop the greatest fondness for it.
I liked the Jam, but I loved The Style Council. I wrote about them earlier this year and posted the article on twitter, where Weller provided to nitpick it. Seemed on brand, tbh...
great PW writeup
Thankfully Weller broke out of the "dad rock" cage in later years. "Nightswimming" is a classic and my favourite R.E.M. song.