Turn It Up - Rock Hall Nominees, Part 1

David and Charles spotlight this year's nominees in a special two-part Turn It Up

It’s that time of year again - the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced its latest set of nominees for induction last week. So we thought we’d spotlight a track by each of them this week in a special double edition of Turn It Up. Here’s part one, with the rest coming Friday. We’re offering them in no particular order. Keep in mind that this isn’t meant to represent our picks for who should get inducted - we’ll get to that soon enough! - but instead our picks for a great and/or notable track by each of the contenders.

Sade – “Soldier of Love” (from Soldier of Love, 2010)

All the things that make Sade Adu and her band so great can’t be captured in just one track, certainly, but “Soldier Of Love” comes close. There’s the hypnotic arrangement, with Adu’s voice playing off of Stuart Matthewman’s guitar, Paul Denman’s bass, and Andrew Hale’s drum programming. There’s the affecting use of dynamics, with the song rising and falling around spare lyrics and abrupt shifts of focus. There’s the seeming mixture of tight composition and semi-improvised liberation. There’s the maturity and vision, both about love and life in the “Wild Wild West,” a powerfully diasporic nod. And, of course, there’s the sound, with Adu’s unmistakable alto at the center of an experience both haunting and deeply pleasurable. I could get lost in this song, and their larger discography, forever and ever. - CH

Dave Matthews Band – “I Did It” (from Everyday, 2001)

Dave Mathews Band were well-equipped to stand at the intersection of jam-band weirdness and post-alternative mainstream rock. As much as they luxuriated in musical explorations and playful chaos, they also delivered plenty of hooks and riffs to ground those busy bodies. “I Did It,” with its bright Glen Ballard production and smirking hook, is a particularly effective combination. Hammering away at his acoustic, Matthews fesses up to how he’s fucked up, not in that “poor me” way that characterized too much of the acoustic-guitar-guy music of that era (including Dave’s), but somewhere in the space between defiant pride and knowing self-deprecation. Behind it all, drummer Carter Beauford pounds away with a thundering swing, driving a track filled with the freedom and fun that DMB devotees have always proclaimed to be central to the experience. Maybe they all just “did it for the buzz,” like the main character here. But, as another ‘90s survivor reminds us, if it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad. And this isn’t bad at all. - CH

Sinead O’Connor – “Dense Water Deeper Down” (from I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss, 2014)

When I started thinking about what O’Connor song to spotlight, my mind went straight to “Dense Water Deeper Down.” On one level, I’m not sure why: It’s an album track from her final record, with comparatively little of her signature blazing clarity or tender beauty. But, on another level, I get it. For one thing, I wanted to champion something from the later chapters of a career that contained so much wonderful music (though was still far too short). More than that, I just love this record. I love how it builds from sturdy rock to joyous soul, with a central metaphor that returns her to love-as-salvation traditions from both sides of the Atlantic. I love how her voice rises from earthy rumble to soaring heights to touches of blissful falsetto. I love the song’s ascent into its horn-driven second half. I love how sexy and spirited it is. And I love how happy she sounds. - CH

Lenny Kravitz – “Again” (from Greatest Hits, 2000)

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Lenny Kravitz’s career – now in its fifth decade – is how well he’s matched his repertoire of classicist rock and R&B gestures with a restless pop sensibility that’s drawn him back multiple times to the charts and the radio. At his best, like the affecting ballad “Again,” Kravitz dials back the obvious cosplay and instead remixes his record collection with a light touch and a loving care. Over big-bang drums and a descending electric riff, with touches of ringing acoustics and stinging strings, Kravitz lets his warm baritone find all the corners of the emotional rush that comes with a moment of new infatuation. On the chorus, he holds the moment as tight as he can before he lets it fly away with electric guitar on its soaring solo. Sometimes, the old tricks are all you need. - CH

Foreigner – “Waiting for a Girl Like You” (from 4, 1982)

What you might call a silly love song, “Waiting for a Girl Like You” is a plainspoken and earnest ballad that hit more powerfully, in part, because vocalist Lou Gramm, guitarist Mick Jones and the rest of Foreigner had to date made their name with hot-blooded and hammer-headed rockers. Cascading synths from Thomas Dolby helped update the sound in a way that anticipated big ballads like, say, Paul Young’s “Everytime You Go Away,” and Gramm, who has said the song was about the woman who became his wife, sings soulfully for once, like he’d suddenly decided to mimic Daryl Hall. Indeed, “Waiting…” peaked at #2, for 10 weeks no less, on the Billboard Hot 100 and, appropriately enough, was blocked from the top spot for several of those by Hall & Oates’ “I Can’t Go for That.” – DC

 Ozzy Osbourne – “Crazy Train” (from Blizzard of Ozz, 1980)

The best solo Ozzy is still solo-debut Ozzy. The obvious pick, sure, but also an undeniable one. As I’ve written elsewhere, Ozzy “doesn’t have what most people would call a good voice, but boy does he have a great one… [and] the way he sounds like no one else is a superpower.” It takes real vocal power to out-blast guitar god Randy Rhoads and it takes wholehearted commitment to the bit, too. Ozzy’s crazy-train conductor lets loose a terrified wail for a world out-of-control world. Pushing a half century later, “Crazy Train” is instantly recognized far beyond the heavy metal crowd—at once a delirious call to expect the unexpected, a timeless warning of trouble all around, and a hopeful anthem that, maybe, it’s not too late.  —DC

A Tribe Called Quest – “Check the Rhime” (from The Low End Theory, 1991)

When Phife Dawg, the Five-Footer, died in 2016, the first music I thought of was “Check the Rhime,” him and Q-Tip checking in with each other, remembering when they were coming up and making sure they were keeping up, going strong. Expressed over a spare jazzy beat (including an Average White Band sample) of drums and bass and quiet flashes of horn and organ, I love the way their convo embodies an in-common history but also a shared community. I also get a kick out of the way these friends’ backward glances are filled with grandfolks’ talk like “frankfurter,” “tidbit” and “smidgen,” with references to antiquated communication technologies like telegrams and homing pigeons, and with a Lou Brock shoutout—that even now are sending new fans to the Google machine for explanations. “You on point, Tip?” “All the time, Phife!” Trust and joy in rhythm and rhyme. — DC

Mary J. Blige – “Time” (from Mary, 1999)

The rhythm track here—a skittery tap-tap pulled from Al Green’s “I’m So Glad You’re Mine” mixed with electric bass and acoustic guitar interpolated from Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise”—is one of my favorite things just by itself. Mary J. Blige’s gentle existential testifying here, meanwhile is scary and grounding at once: The world’s in such a mess she’s even considered ending it all, but, wiser now, she realizes that (contra sister Irma and the Stones) time is not on our side, it runs out for us all which makes it all the more precious. The world’s a mess, and she knows more drama is guaranteed. The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul is singing the blues to make sure she’s not going to miss any of it. She doesn’t want us to miss it either. – DC

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