LogFAQs > #912420791

Am I Cool or What?

Cracked informed me that there was an entire album of Jazz and R&B songs inspired by Garfield, so naturally I put listening to it at the top of my To Do list. I figured it would either be overwhelmingly furry, laughably horrible, or both.

...The album is so strangely average that I'm even less sure what the point of it all was. There's so many big names doing the best they can with the material, that it's never laughably terrible. It's also not good and not as furry as one might expect. It just..."is". It exists in defiance of everything; it has no reason to be, yet it exists. It should be terrible, but it isn't. These artists should be good, but they aren't. It should appeal to someone, but it doesn't.



Shake Your Paw (The Temptations): Well, they did what I felt was impossible--they made a song about wagging your tail that I don't care for. This song is a failure on every conceivable level: The lyrics are unbearably repetitive, consisting almost entirely of "Shake Your Paw (Shake Your Paw), Wag That Tail (Wag That Tail)" ; it wants to be a dance song, but it doesn't have a good enough beat to be played...anywhere, at any time, for any reason, in any universe.

It's rather sad to see such a great group reduced to a song like this.



I Love It When I'm Naughty (Patti LaBelle): ...why. Just...just why...



Fat is Where It's At (Carl Anderson): I actually like this song. I shouldn't, but it's kinda funny and I like the music. I don't have many R&B songs on any of my playlists, but it's got this nice mellow groove that I'm digging tonight. I should try to do more research on that genre at some point.

Also, it gets some points for being clearly related to Garfield--after the failed dance song and the abomination that was the last song, it's nice to have someone get the album back on topic.



Long 'Bout Midnight (Natalie Cole): Have you ever wanted to hear a jazz singer use her sexiest voice while singing about Garfield eating in the middle of the night? No judgment! Just kinda wondering who the target demographic of this song was.



Nine Lives (The Pointer Sisters): A fairly generic love song that does nothing for me. It's not bad, but I think I'd take a song I actively disliked over the average-ness of this track.



Here Comes Garfield (Lou Rawls): I think this is the first song that mentions Garfield by name, which seems a bit odd for an album about Garfield. Song's okay; it's just a generic Garfield theme song. There have been better themes and worse themes, leaving it as something that just sorta exists. It is perhaps the song that best represents the album: Short, pointless, inoffensive, and forgettable.



Next To You I'm Even Better (Diane Schuur): I've been trying all night to find a way to connect this song to Garfield and haven't come up with anything. It feels like it's entirely unrelated, like the song was written for a different album and somehow wound up here. I don't get it.



Spare Time (David Benoit): Do you want an instrumental version of one of the themes from "Garfield Gets a Life"? Was there ever anyone who watched that special, heard this song, and said "yes, I want more of this, but jazzier and without the lyrics!"?



And then two other songs, but I've lost interest in discussing this album. "Fat is Where It's At" was worth finding, the other songs not so much.
---

Marshmallow unicorns forever!