 Tracey Ullman Although her HBO show "Tracey Takes On" is a blankest-of-stares experience for me every time I run into it on cable, I still have a great deal of affection for Tracey Ullman's early 80s music career, which amounted to two albums but remains possibly the best way to appreciate her talent. Essentially, her schtick was a somewhat jokey take on girl group pop, done very reverently and with a total straight face, but not exactly "serious" either. Most stores stock this CD in the comedy section, but relegating this music to the level of "Weird Al" Yankovic doesn't do it justice. Really, it's more like a celebrity cash-in album, but completely self-aware and, I suppose, she wasn't really a celebrity at the time. Oh well – the pop is good pop, pops. The Best Of basically contains the original You Broke My Heart In 17 Places album in its original form, with five tracks added from the follow-up, You Caught Me Out, and four additional non-LP tracks. At 20 tracks and just over an hour, this is a whole lot of Tracey for one sitting, but it's one of those mix-tape-friendly CDs that definitely has enough appeal to keep it in the collection. The big hit singles "Breakaway" and "They Don't Know" are in the house, always welcome to these ears, and "Terry" off the second album is actually even better than those, like "They Don't Know," a Kirsty MacColl composition out-Kirstied by Ullman with consummate style. I've always wondered what Kirsty MacColl thought about Ullman getting more fame and success with her material than she herself did, especially given that the productions were almost identical to the original versions (check out The Stiff Records box set for Kirsty's original "They Don't Know"). Ullman and MacColl, for me, are Stiff Records' greatest contributions to music, no offense to any Ian Dury & the Blockheads fans in the audience. There's a ton of filler on this disc, but at its worst it's only innocuous and forgettable 60s-retro 80s music. A couple of also-ran fun moments are covers of "(Life is a Rock) But the Radio Rolled Me," "(I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear" and Dusty Springfield's "I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten." "You Broke My Heart in 17 Places" is a lesser MacColl tune, "My Guy" is a nice ballad reminiscent of the Shangri-La's, but by way of Madness, "Bobby's Girl" is probably the only true clunker on the disc. Really, this is a disc you keep around for the moments of transcendence – "They Don't Know," "Terry," "Breakaway" --- and the rest is decent padding. Clearly Tracey Ullman knew there was only so far that this type of music would go, but she had a good run with it, and she's done pretty well since, yes? Still, I'd hardly call this "comedy," at least not in the way that, say, Bicentennial Nigger is. Now Richard Pryor doing girl-group pop – that I'd pay heavily to see.
Review by Reginald Soake |