Stone Roses

TRUE CONFESSIONS : I WANNA BE ADORED

I think I’m laying myself open for a bit of a pounding today.

I don’t mind some of the songs that The Stone Roses have released over the years and indeed would go as far to say that I quite like one or two. One of them, however, is not I Wanna Be Adored.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m always intrigued by its opening segment – that collage of noise, droning bass and the most precise plucking of electric guitar strings. The gradual build-up does offer some excitement that what is unfolding and slowly unpeeling itself is going to be special and unforgettable. Just a pity it gets ruined with the vocal……………

I’m not the first to ever raise an issue over the singing abilities, or otherwise, of Ian Brown; and being honest, it’s not something I’m comfortable doing as some of my favourite moments in pop music, especially those of an indie-bent, have come through with an out-of-tune or flat vocal delivery. And yes, there are other moments in the band’s canon what he does makes a wonderful and possibly perfect addition to everything else that’s going on – She Bangs The Drums and I Am The Resurrection very much spring to mind – but I just can’t think otherwise that his contribution to ‘Adored’ makes it border on the unlistenable.

mp3 : The Stone Roses – I Wanna Be Adored

As ever, feel free to disagree.

PS…..I do love this cover version (which I pinched years ago from over at Drew’s place):-

mp3 : The Raveonettes – I Wanna Be Adored

JC

 

13 thoughts on “TRUE CONFESSIONS : I WANNA BE ADORED”

  1. I’ll agree with you on this one, JC. After a nearly 2-minute slow build ‘Adored’ never goes anywhere. It’s just a simple 3 chord progression and a 20-word lyric repeated over and over. I like the Raveonettes cover, too — never heard it before.

  2. Agree. Having suffered the Roses live show a couple of times, I think it’s a minor miracle that the producers ever managed to make Brown’s vocals vaguely tolerable on record.

  3. His vocal is infinitely preferable to thousands of pill-addled beer boys in a field bellowing it at the top of their lungs.

  4. agreed – again saw them live twice and thought the music was amazing until Ian started singing….

  5. I absolutely agree, the long intro is promising, but nothing happens. (Having ssid that, I don’t like tne Roses album anyway)hat Sto

  6. I’m obviously in the minority here but Adored is one of a very small number of Roses songs I like. Really think they got far more credit on the back of Madchester than they deserved. But their mediocrity bothered me more than Brown’s vocals.

  7. The Stone Roses were always a completely boring non event to me. I can’t even remember anything I might have heard form this album. It’s near-immediate canonization in the UK had always puzzled me. There were [at best] one or two Happy Mondays songs that worked for me, but that’s as far a the horrid Madchester sound went with this appalled American. And I think the “Wrote For Luck” track that I liked was really down to Vince Clarke’s remix which added synthesizers. Once I got actually bought their album, I was over them. The “Bummed” album was chaotic ugly noise that did nothing for me. Then that horrifying CD insert was injury to insult!

  8. Pah – I like the original, JC, but thanks for that terrific cover version.

    My True Confession: “Bless me father, for I have sinned: I’ve
    never cared much for the Stone Roses’ ‘Fools Gold’.”

  9. Can’t agree with you JC, I still really like it. As you say it is easy to take pot shots at Brown’s voice, it is nowhere near his worst vocal performance for me that’s Sally Cinnamon. Although it isn’t the best debut album of all time, when it came out it was great and fitted in so well with the acid house scene, which some may find incongruous but it did. 1988 was a great year to be a 19 year old who had grown up listening to soul, punk and late 60s sounds courtesy of the older hippy types I kicked about with all of which seemed to be an influence on RAVE culture which for me included the Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays. Both of these bands were the gateway for a hell of a lot of scooterists amongst many other into House music. I know off topic but I have been doing a bit of looking back at 1988 recently. A very good year

  10. Adored is great- a perfect intro, building on bass and Squire’s rippling guitar lines. It doesn’t go anywhere- its not supposed to. It leads into the supersharp guitar pop of She Bangs The Drum. Brown’s voice live could often wander off key but on record its fine- and again, perfect pitch and singing isn’t the point. Brown was you on stage. He looked the part. he co-wrote the words. He had the haircut. Being able to sing isn’t what he’s there for. If you want great vocals, Mariah Carey’s over that way.

  13. I cannot argue with single word of that, and if Ian Brown was being totally honest, he couldn’t really either. I went to see him several years ago, and I could have sung better: I mime at football game. Where he got it right, he certainly did, and those are our treasured moments.

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