Restall encapsulates this history, noting early on that the compelling question that led him to write the book was “why did a successful album fail?” and that he hoped his exploration of Blue Moves’ afterlife might answer the inverse question, “why did a failed album succeed?”Īs can often be found in the 33 1/3 books, Restall tells the tale of how he came to acquire Blue Moves as a 13-year-old boarding school student in England. From a strictly commercial point of view, John’s career was seemingly forever changed.ĭespite the negativity, John has often spoken highly of Blue Moves, offering this assessment in his 2019 memoir, Me: “It’s a great album, but it’s not exactly the work of two people who are cartwheeling down the street, overflowing with the joys of life.” But after a few weeks of out-of-the-box sales, a wave of negative reviews – including the famed “What is this tripe?” comment made by music critic Robert Christgau‘s wife – hit hard, and sales of Blue Moves stalled, leaving it to be considered a flop that “only” sold three million copies worldwide. As Restall points out, Blue Moves is an emotionally mature and musically eclectic piece of work, moving from the orchestral ballad, “Tonight” to the hard-rocking “One Horse Town” with ease. Hit singles - both album tracks and stand-alone 45s - were rocketing up the charts and concert venues were selling out.īlue Moves, ushered in by the smash hit, “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word”, seemed destined to continue the Elton John juggernaut. Two 1975 albums, the autobiographical Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy and the more lightweight-but-harder-rocking Rock of the Westies, had entered the Billboard Album Chart at #1, the first time this had ever happened once, let alone twice. Released in late 1976, Blue Moves coincided with the peak of Elton John’s career. And despite that opening sentence, Restall considers Blue Moves to be a very good album, indeed. While Restall’s books typically cover Colonial Latin American history, here he provides a spirited defense of Elton John’s 1976 double album, Blue Moves, which is commonly considered to be the record that derailed, if not destroyed, John’s career. Blue Moves, the 148th book in the series, was written by Matthew Restall, the Edwin Erie Sparks Professor of History, Anthropology, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Thus begins the latest book in Bloomsbury Academic’s 33 1/3 series, each volume a deep dive into a specific record.
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