Dang, and I was just starting to get into hm again. I am rediscovering the genius of Listen Without Prejudice - this has to be one of the most criminally underrated gems of the era. Plus he smoked on American Idol during the finals. C'mon, George, you can pull yourself up again!

Dayclear said:

haha, dayclear I thought you meant AGAIN! meaning after the 19th... when he was actualla arrested. Would be really sick if he'd get caught in the near future again.

fms said:

LWP I ist my favorite album of all time.

He was such an great songwriter aroudn that time. He didn't care anymore about what's in or not... and just wrote what was in his heart. He listened a lot to music from 1965 to 1975. One can clearly hear that.
I mean, his main influence were the Beatles Rubber Soul era (Heal The Pain), Stones (Waiting For That Day which is basically You Can't Always Get What You Want), it's little sister "Waiting" and the third song based on the blues scheme is "Something To Save".

His cover version of They Won't Go When I Go is fantastic. I really like it better than Stevie's.

Praying For Time was his homage to John Lennon's Phil Spector produced tracks.

Only "Soul Free" stands a bit out as it's clearly influenced by Soul II Soul! But still a great song!

I like the fact he added the dates of writing the songs!!

You can clearly see how he went, songwriterly.

Btw, if you want to have the full feeling of his craft in these days you gotta included Happy, Fantasy and Crazyman Dance too as these songs are LWP leftovers.

Too Funky he began in 1989 but it had 6 different versions and an insider says in 1990 it sounded a lot like Happy.

Do You Really Want To Know there's no prove it was written around 1990. Maybe especially for the Hot Red album.

Also he wrote "How Many Heartaches" and "Someday" around that period.

Bummer.