I heard SOS on the car radio today. I put the sound up really loud and it was just fantastic! :w00t:

 

The DJ said,'Well, that's certainly a different sound for Take That....' :lol:

My physical CD should have been here today. It didn't arrive. <_<

 

Anyway, can someone who has a physical copy in their paws please tell me who the writing credits for each song are. When I downloaded it from Amazon it tells me Gary Barlow is the sole composer for every song. Surely that can't be right? :unsure:

I don't have the physical copy but I am positive that it would say 'Written and composed by Take That' for every song on there - regardless of how much input certain members had. It's the same with many bands - even U2 do it this way despite Bono and The Edge writing most songs alone. Very odd that it says that on your downloaded copy. :lol:

 

I ADORE 'Underground Machine' :wub:

What a Beast. What a Man!!!!

 

 

:dancing: :dancing: :dancing:

i cannot wait anymore to get my hands on the deluxe edition.. (released this friday). i'm so ®obsessed with everything concerning TT/RW

Underground machine is seriously addictive!

The Flood - Didn't realize at first that I will like it that much. Robbie / Gary voice goes really well here, but I'm happy Robbie got most of the song. -_- 9/10

 

SOS - I love the part which Robbie sings. :wub: It's somehow at right place. Again, his voice goes well with Marks' also. :P Must be a single! 9/10

 

Wait - Reminds me of song from one boyband also. Obviously, I can't remember which song I'm talking about. Anyway, nothing special. That can't be a single, it would be a stupid, stupid move! 5/10

 

Kidz - I love Muse, and I'm not a fan of comparing that song with Uprising. Just one little similarity... Don't know how to explain that exactly, but it isn't important anyway... Again I like how Mark sings it. :wub: Not a huge fan of Robbie's part, but ok... Also, must be a single! 9/10

 

Pretty Things - Music is booooring. I could write that. 4/10

 

Happy Now - I like chorus, like Robbie's voice in it (lyrics are poor), just they repeat it too much. 6/10

 

Underground Machine - I like some parts, not chorus. Some weird sounds in it. :lol: 7/10

 

What Do You Want From Me? - I don't understand all "not liking" of this song. I guess line "I still want to have sex with you" is a bit too much, but I really enjoy in song. The way Mark sings it and music, everything is very good. Who have something against that line, should listen and translate some of Serbian folk songs. :lol: Then you would see / hear what is really tasteless. :lol: 9/10

 

Affirmation - I admit, I don't like Howard. :mellow: Even more since documentary. Nothing special. Now, that should be a hidden track. 4/10

 

Eight Letters - Gary is good, lyrics are good, but overall nothing special. I think he deserved a better song to sing on his own on this album. This one probably Robbie should got, and other one Gary should sing. 7/10

 

Flowerbed - Jason can sing! :o And it is good! I actually like just ending of this song, but I really enjoy in it, overall. It's weird a bit, and somehow special. I think it's a great as a hidden track, but on another side, I think it deserves more. 8/10

 

Overall: 8/10

I didn't expect that I will like this album as much, as I really do. Not my taste of music, for sure. But, somehow, I like to listen it. So far... Also, maybe I will like it even more.

Edited November 16, 201014 yr by Nada

Thanks for taking the time to post Nada. Great review

Nice review Nada :D

 

Where is your review Jups? :smoke:

Still in my head :P

I demand a long and excellent review be posted ASAP! :smoke:

 

I want at least 100 words per song. :smoke:

Indeed. -_-

 

I want to listen to it a few more times first. I keep falling asleep at Pretty Things and missing the second half of the album. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I just find it so soothing. :lol:

Album review: Take That, Progress ***

 

CONSPIRACY theorists, try this one out: what if Take That's "split" was really one long, meticulously-planned soap opera? It's a crazy idea. But don't you think it's funny how at least one of them has remained in the public eye at any given time for

 

Let's take a breakneck trip down memory lane. First Robbie Williams, apparently set for implosion, left the band in 1995, before the others split following the Never Forget tour in 1996. Then in quick succession Mark Owen, Gary Barlow and Williams released solo albums to initial success, and in Williams' case - thanks mainly to Angels and a dashingly eccentric and/or irritatingly attention-seeking public persona - to bona fide solo superstardom.

 

Thoroughly milking this for the next few years, a period punctuated by news of Owen's Celebrity Big Brother-winning turn and Jason Orange turning up in Lynda La Plante thrillers, Williams' career trough arrived in style with 2006's dire Rudebox album - just as the other four-fifths of Take That were preparing to release their comeback album Beautiful World, which would go on to be a monumental success. Wind on four years and an album apiece to the present day, and both parties have at last buried what shards of hatchet remain, coming together to record this album in a spirit of nostalgia and chummy optimism.

 

It's an impressive feat. Where the last decade in music has been dotted with classic bands attempting money-spinning reformations, Take That have managed two. And judging by a demand for live tickets which jammed whole phone networks the other week, this one should be just as popular as the last.

 

From the eye-catching, solar-seared cover image of all five bandmembers evolving from crouch to stand to walk to leap and the already-debuted comeback single The Flood, all appears to be business as usual here. "Standing on the edge of forever / at the start of whatever," is both Williams' and the album's first carefree couplet, delivered over the kind of upbeat synthetic symphony which Take That 2.0 now excel at. Undoubtedly a not-so-veiled comment on the fame machine and their own situation, The Flood mixes the personal and the pop-messianic on lyrics like "we were holding back the flood / they said we'd never dance again".

 

Come track two, though, and this could be an entirely different band. SOS is a duet between Owen and Williams, a sugar-rush blast of commercial electro-pop which has a stab - in language if not in any real understanding - at the political

We'll be practising our politics / defending all our policies / preparing for apocalypse", hollers Williams, sandwich board and wild-eyed stare sadly not visible until they make a video to go with the song.

 

This is the first track on which the production skills of Stuart Price (aka sometime clubland icon Les Rhythmes Digitales and Jacques Lu Cont) are audible, in that it mixes a sense of redefining urgency and electronic lustre with an unashamedly commercial edge. Presumably Barlow and co are looking for a similar sound to that which Price crafted for Madonna's Hung Up, The Killers' Human or Kylie Minogue's Aphrodite album, and they get it with the synthetic R&B of Wait and the strident Pet Shop Boys-play-Muse dystopia of Kidz. "Leave your thoughts and save yourself, you fools," intones Owen, warning us "there'll be trouble when the kidz come out" over the sound of police sirens. So maybe not one for Barlow to return to next time he's asked to play a song alongside his chosen Prime Ministerial candidate, David Cameron.

 

Following on from the rather dull ballad Pretty Things comes the album's best sequence. First up is Happy Now, a track which eases in on a blissed-out bubble reminiscent of Röyksopp's Poor Leno, before bursting into an exuberant chorus which does a passable if sanitised impression of Daft Punk's One More Time. Then it's Underground Machine, the track which more than any other has Williams' fingerprints all over it. "You're in a room with a rock star," he swaggers all over a Goldfrapp-aping, Black Cherry-era riff, "only I'll play the good parts." It makes little sense, like many of the lyrics here, but somehow it sounds just right.

 

What Do You Want From Me earns its stripes mainly on the basis of a chorus which recalls Journey's Don't Stop Believin', although Owen's heartfelt "I still wanna get old with you" line is somewhat diminished by a verse which sounds George Formbyesque in its thick-accented awkwardness.

 

Affirmation is mainly notable for making you hope the group are fit enough to keep up with the hyperactive speed of the thing when they play it live, but the closing Eight Letters is perhaps the biggest surprise here - a gentle, chiming ballad in the form of battlefield love letters, which melds a hopeful, bittersweet lyric with Howard Donald's more than capable and apparently almost untreated vocal.

 

The song has Christmas No 1 written all over it, just as this album will undoubtedly be a huge success over the winter. By Take That's standards it certainly does represent progress, although what's most impressive is the bond Price has created between what once made this group so successful and what's gone on in music since they've been away.

 

 

Source..The Scotsman

 

 

 

 

Progress - Album review

 

If in the year 3000 the musical historians and documenters of popular culture were to cover the period of Rock n Roll mythology circa 1960 to 2010 they would have many great artists and bands to feature and many great tales of excess to tell. From the drug induced deaths of Hendrix and Keith Moon to the sexual adventures of Jim Morrison. From Syd Barrett’s acid meltdown into hermetic lifestyle, Kurt Cobains failure to deal with the fame we all aspire to and subsequent suicide. Inter band squabbling and rivalries also provide great copy from the twin ego’s of Lennon and McCartney or Morrissey and Marr and the actual sibling rivalry of a band like Oasis. One band that the future generation probably wouldn’t touch upon is Take That, yet on the release of the years biggest album to date its time to take stock and realise that the journey they have taken from boys to men is an amazing story to rival any of the iconic figures of the past fifty years.

 

“Progress” is a great great record, and adult Rock/Pop album in the mould of U2 or Muse and with the glitter stomp swagger of T-Rex infused with the 80’s electro styling’s of artists like The Human League or The Pet Shop Boys. It’s an album that references it’s own story and is as far removed from the boy band they once were or the clichéd remarks about Ford Mondeo drivers people who haven’t heard the album like to band about.

 

Lets not forget Take That were five strangers, nay five teenagers who had never met before 1990 thrown together as a manufactured pop band and marketed at the gay clubs of Manchester, they were kids who made music for kids, in 2010 they are men who make albums for adults to love two entirely different bands and to judge the band on their past is to miss the point entirely. The fact the latter Take That exists is in itself a remarkable achievement in itself but look closer at the story and it’s even more so.

 

From 1992 to 1996 Take That were a genuine phenomenon, with a hysterical fan base the equivalent of Beatlemania, maybe more so as when they split their fans had to be consoled by specially set up hotlines. By this point they were a four piece having ousted Robbie Williams by mutual misunderstanding, Robbie was hanging with Oasis and Gary Barlow was almost dictorial in his ruling of the band. Williams then took ultimate revenge by becoming the UK’s biggest pop star whilst Barlow’s own solo career descended into an embarrassing joke. There was pure hatred and rivalry between the two of them played out in public that made the sibling squabbling of the Gallagher brothers look like two spoilt children in the playground and Robbie was clearly the ultimate victor over his former band.

 

Then in 2006 rising like a Phoenix from the flames Take That came back minus Robbie to once again become one of the UK’s biggest Pop acts winning Brit Awards and Ivor Novello’s along the way and their best ever song “The Greatest Day” sound tracking just about every reality TV show and sporting event you could name. Meanwhile Robbie’s own solo career had gone into a downward spiral, the “Rudebox” album of 2006 was a commercial flop and 2009’s “Reality Killed The Video Star” was a half hearted will this do type of album. He’d also had enough of the public eye becoming a virtual recluse and having suffered major solvent abuse problems and manic depression/mental breakdowns, a Rock n Roll meltdown to rival Keith Moon whilst at the same time being perceived as an ego maniac and playing to the cameras whilst inside slowly breaking.

 

It’s now remarkable and beneficial to both Take That and Robbie that Barlow and Williams sat in a room together and kissed and made up like the grown men they now are. Theirs is in many ways a genuine love story of two close friends that had issues with each other. If the Gallagher brothers had shown this level of maturity the world wouldn’t have to had suffer the monstrosity that is the Beady Eye single. Take That need Robbie Williams and Robbie Williams needs Take That, it’s as simple as that.

And the album they have made together is an energetic celebration of all things that have gone before and all things that might still be.

 

From the grandiose stadium rock of “The Flood” to the heartfelt almost ballad that is “Eight Letters” that is the story of Take That itself, this is a genuinely brilliant record. “SOS” sounds like The Killers if Brandon Flowers allowed himself sunny delight instead of naval gazing introspection. “Pretty Things” recalls The Human League with it’s Casio keyboard intro and softly delivered vocal from Williams. Mark Owen deals with his own demons on two tracks the Muse like “Kidz” and an open letter to his wife to forgive his recent intercessions on “What Do You Want From Me”.

 

“Underground Machine” sees everyone trading vocals to a disco stomper that sounds like Dead or Alive’s 1985 #1 hit “You Spin Me Round”. Howard Donald takes lead vocals on “Affirmation” to remind the listener that all this isn’t just about Robbie and Gary but in truth it really is. And that’s a fact underlined by Take That’s greatest moment, and in keeping with the remarkable story that is this journey the best track on the album isn’t even credited, its hidden away 25 seconds after “Eight Letters” supposedly closes the album.

 

“Flowerbed” if played to an unsuspecting listener doesn’t sound like any song Take That have ever released, its got an Elbow like intro if Elbow were in fact influenced by avant garde composers like Phillip Glass or Vangelis before a dreamlike vocal laments the bands story in Brokeback Mountain fashion but without sounding trite at all. The haunting backing track reminds of “Life In A Northern Town” by Dream Academy and that fact is drilled home when the closing echoes of the song end like The Beatles “ a day in the life”, it’s a genuinely moving song that illustrates the confidence Take That now hold by tucking it away hidden as a treasure locket for the fans to discover.

 

To Quote a lyric from the album “Eight letters, three words one meaning”, well that’s I love You, and its also “Progress”. Put the two together and you have one of the best comeback records of all time.

 

Rating: ****

 

misformusic.com

 

No wonder 8 Letters sounds like Vienna - it is a sample and Midge Ure and the other members are credited as songwriters of the song :lol:

 

That is shocking really. Why were Lennon/Macca not credited on 'Shame? :o

No wonder 8 Letters sounds like Vienna - it is a sample and Midge Ure and the other members are credited as songwriters of the song :lol:

 

That is shocking really. Why were Lennon/Macca not credited on 'Shame? :o

 

To be fair ... Eight Letters sounds EXACTLY like Vienna in places ... it cannot possibly be denied - whereas Shame really only borrowed the little guitar riff from Blackbird and at least Rob and Gary made an effort to disguise it a little!

 

I wonder if Vienna will get another shot in the charts after it was so cruelly robbed of its place by Joe Dolce's Shaddapa Ya Face originally? Any excuse to post a brilliant song/video.

 

 

Kath

Edited November 17, 201014 yr by Kathyp

Ah yes. The biggest injustice in UK chart history. Vienna :wub: :cry:

I actually like every song on this album if we count out affirmation...

It is a VERY GOOD album imo. My favourite studio album of the year! (and just the second one I've bought after Speak Now)

I love the first 7 songs and then Eight Letters. Not too keen on Affirmation and the Flowerbed one although I will listen to them. Mark's one What Do You Want From Me is eminently skippable. I really don't like that one very much. The lyrics are dire. :puke2:

Tell you what though, this album is total marmite. Love it or hate it.

 

All those reviews on Amazon are a scream. It's either 'fantastic' or 'awful' with very little in between.

 

And the 'awful' ones all seem to include the following comments:-

' I only got into Take That when they re-formed as a foursome...'

' What has happened to all those lovely ballads?'

' Why Why Why Gary have you let him back? He has ruined everything.'

'Where is Gary's lovely voice?'

'It's far too noisy'

' It sounds just like a Robbie album'

'I've thrown it in the bin'

'I'll need to buy granny a different Xmas present' :P

 

 

Oh well. As 'He' says, 'You Win Some, You Lose Some' :lol: