Now each and everyday, I realize the price I have to pay you. You’re Wonderful. – Wonderful
Adam Ant – Wonderful – 1995
There I was, prepping my radio show at the local station on a Saturday morning, about to go on for my one hour entertainment show, listening to the FM sister station play the Top Forty hits of the week. I had been given this time slot simply because I walked in to the station and asked the program director. I sold him on the idea and he gave me the show.
Simple.
I don’t recall who my guest was that day.
But I’ll never for get the moment that I heard a familiar voice seeping in over the speakers.
And Casey Kasem’s voice.
“That was ‘Wonderful’ by Adam Ant.”
How does this happen? I hadn’t heard note one from Stuart Goddard in half a decade.
If you haven’t heard “Wonderful”, the song, then you haven’t completed your Adam Ant discography because that song, in and of itself, was more of a comeback than the previous three four records combined.
“Wonderful” is lovely. It’s honest. It sounds great. It has that great bridge where, when Adam sings “so deep I can’t get under it” while his voice gets higher and higher…it’s inspired.
The album is almost personal. It features more acoustic guitar than I’ve ever heard on and Ant record. The lush, pastoral opening of “Won’t Take that Talk” obviously is inspired by Radiohead and the tropico-stylings of “Beautiful Dream” begs for a steel drum but thank god there isn’t one. “Image of Yourself” is the sublime amalgam of Strip era sounds with a forward thinking Ant sound. It’s what that album should have sounded like. “Alien” tries too hard to ape David Bowie and “Gotta Be a Sin” wants to be a single (although it almost succeeds).
“Vampires” is the most complete epic that Adam has ever achieved. One wonders why he hasn’t touched on the dark children of Dracula to evoke sexuality in the past.
While songs like “Yin & Yang” are difficult at best, they also owe so much to Lennon and the great experimenters in pop-music that it’s easy for me to forgive.
I like Wonderful a lot more than I thought I would, having avoided it for so long. I think it wears better as a record heard by an old Adam Fan entering his mid-life.
This is mid-life Adam. And the last we’d hear from him.
Come back, Adam. All is forgiven.
Grade: B
A-Side: Wonderful, Beautiful Dream
BlindSide: Won’t Take that Talk, Image of Yourself, Vampires
DownSide: Very Long Ride
