November 1983
Adam Ant
Strip
3.25 out of 5 (but it’s really 2.75. I just like Adam. A lot)
Adam Ant
Strip
3.25 out of 5 (but it’s really 2.75. I just like Adam. A lot)
Highlights:
Spanish Games
Puss ’n Boots
Navel to Neck
Spanish Games
Puss ’n Boots
Navel to Neck
In the context of his work, Strip is…not good, that’s for sure. But it has it’s moments.
But in the context of all that has come in 83, it’s wholly different and weirder than just about anything else and doesn’t seem to have a relationship with anything out there. For that, I give him props. Also, cuz I am inveterate Ant fan, so this might not be fair. I’ve seen him 5 times in concert. I own just about everything he’s put out. I have the fucking import AntBox FFS.
But, Strip is…ugh. And it all starts with Adam laying seductively in hay ala Jane Russell. Yo, Adam, what happened to the Dandy Highwayman? Where’s the brocade jacket wearing indian pirate? Ugh, if your MO was to alienate males and double down on female listeners, you succeeded at the first and failed at the second. They were already with you for “Goody Two Shoes”, idiot.
Me, in 2011: “Instead of building on the success of Friend or Foe Adam, ever the independent trailblazer tripped so far and hard that he would never be able to recover. Not fully.
Antmusic is gone. There's one drummer. There are too many violins. What an unpleasant record.
“Saw the couple lying there. Teach each other how to swear. Could this be a dirty night? It could be if they're doing it right.”
Atrocious.”
But in the context of all that has come in 83, it’s wholly different and weirder than just about anything else and doesn’t seem to have a relationship with anything out there. For that, I give him props. Also, cuz I am inveterate Ant fan, so this might not be fair. I’ve seen him 5 times in concert. I own just about everything he’s put out. I have the fucking import AntBox FFS.
But, Strip is…ugh. And it all starts with Adam laying seductively in hay ala Jane Russell. Yo, Adam, what happened to the Dandy Highwayman? Where’s the brocade jacket wearing indian pirate? Ugh, if your MO was to alienate males and double down on female listeners, you succeeded at the first and failed at the second. They were already with you for “Goody Two Shoes”, idiot.
Me, in 2011: “Instead of building on the success of Friend or Foe Adam, ever the independent trailblazer tripped so far and hard that he would never be able to recover. Not fully.
Antmusic is gone. There's one drummer. There are too many violins. What an unpleasant record.
“Saw the couple lying there. Teach each other how to swear. Could this be a dirty night? It could be if they're doing it right.”
Atrocious.”
I gave it a D back then.
Look, I like the elasticity in Adam’s voice, something he was never really praised for. He played with his vocals, placing sounds in different parts of his mouth that he sounded weird while also very accessible. (Listen to his backing vocals on “Vanity”) The drummers who were brought in to produce this thing tried, I think. Phil Collins produced the hits, “Strip” and “Puss n Boots” (a song I quite like, actually) and Richard Burgess of the synth-group Landscape did the rest. But that’s not Adam and he would prove that this is not his idiom a few years later with the Andre Cymone produced Manners & Physique (Which produced Adam’s hit, “Room at the Top”)
I would submit that songs like “Baby, Let Me Scream at You” and “Puss ’n Boots” would’ve been perfect on Friend or Foe. But Burgess smooths it all out to make it 83-radio-friendly and it fails. “Spanish Games” & “Montreal” almost survive the flattening and would’ve felt at home on Prince Charming. Nice to see that Adam is still trying to be cheeky with styles (the former is reminiscent of “Los Rancheros”) but Burgess’s will be done.
The one that survives the Burgess-ing and probably sounds most like old Adam is “Navel to Neck” (which is also the most successful in this experiment of hybridizing Antmusic with sex. Adam was always about sexuality but here he’s trying o do an album that is dripping with it. He fails but his attempt is admirable.
To me.
I can’t be objective.
In the midst of an Adam retrospective this is garbage.
But after 204 records of 1983, so many of them just awful, at least he’s having fun.
Look, I like the elasticity in Adam’s voice, something he was never really praised for. He played with his vocals, placing sounds in different parts of his mouth that he sounded weird while also very accessible. (Listen to his backing vocals on “Vanity”) The drummers who were brought in to produce this thing tried, I think. Phil Collins produced the hits, “Strip” and “Puss n Boots” (a song I quite like, actually) and Richard Burgess of the synth-group Landscape did the rest. But that’s not Adam and he would prove that this is not his idiom a few years later with the Andre Cymone produced Manners & Physique (Which produced Adam’s hit, “Room at the Top”)
I would submit that songs like “Baby, Let Me Scream at You” and “Puss ’n Boots” would’ve been perfect on Friend or Foe. But Burgess smooths it all out to make it 83-radio-friendly and it fails. “Spanish Games” & “Montreal” almost survive the flattening and would’ve felt at home on Prince Charming. Nice to see that Adam is still trying to be cheeky with styles (the former is reminiscent of “Los Rancheros”) but Burgess’s will be done.
The one that survives the Burgess-ing and probably sounds most like old Adam is “Navel to Neck” (which is also the most successful in this experiment of hybridizing Antmusic with sex. Adam was always about sexuality but here he’s trying o do an album that is dripping with it. He fails but his attempt is admirable.
To me.
I can’t be objective.
In the midst of an Adam retrospective this is garbage.
But after 204 records of 1983, so many of them just awful, at least he’s having fun.
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