Michael McDonald - Blue Obsession

I said a mean thing about Michael McDonald. I called him the Nickelback of Adult-Contemporary R&B. I'm wearing big-boy pants, i said it and i accept the consequences. Now, being the smooth negotiator that i am, i plead no contest because i am perfectly willing to accept the punishment for my actual crime. Most people won't accept my differentiation that Nickelback is a great rock band who play terrible songs on purpose because they mistakenly think those songs are good, so while i'm willing to accept penalty for the insult, i think the judge will understand the simple motivation for my sensational claim: McDonald sounds like he's working through the pain of a particularly nasty hernia, and that is pure useless opinion on my part. In short, it's a false comparison, because McDonald is actually good and i'll prove it. 

Skip tells me i have a penchant for prolonging the perplexity, so i'll paraphrase. Your other brother Doobie is the real deal OG: Steely Dan, Bonnie Raitt, Queen Aretha, you name it, and his five-grammy palm exploding heart maneuver is killer. And let's not forget that "I Keep Forgetting" is the sample for Warren G's "Regulate."

I politely explained that to Sandra, and her verdict was quite reasonable. Given that i operate exclusively inside the context of full albums, my sentence can reasonably be commuted to listening to the first real solo album that pops up in a youtube search, with the condition that vocal delivery is off the table as far as criticism goes. So, finally, i give you Michael McDonald's 2007 album Finally. Coincidentally, i called Randy Newman my grandmother last night and this one has a track called "Grandmother." You might cry foul at not listening to one of his albums from the 70s, 80s, or 90s, but youtube's search algorithm is well outside my control, it's the first one that popped up after all...

... Sadly, Sandra is wise to all of my tricks, and she quickly punched me in the face for trying to slip a random Finnish singer/songwriter with the same name past the Auditors, even though the playlist hilariously shows up on the actual Michael McDonald page. So, Blue Obsession it is.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lZ0zoRbnl9I1k82I1dgIiiOz202ZU5lMc

It's from 2000, and it's Blue-eyed Soul according to wikipedia. Again, you could fault me for avoiding the real subject matter of the godfather of Yacht Rock, but UMG and i aren't friends, they don't want me to hear those albums. Again again, you takes what youtube gives you, and you row.

We can't compare him to Otis, or Eddie, or Sam. Like it or not, we have to compare him to Art, and Chriscross, and Dionne Warwick, and Rod McKuen. This is masculine men expressing real emotion in a strangely insulated world of sincerity and individualism, completely divorced from the political and social environment of the real world. In short, it's only corny if you're a jerk. In long, i've pointed out how the collective idealism of the 60s died in tragically hilarious ways like 300 times, and this is literally the psychological extension of that phenomenon. Just like metal is the outlet for all those bad naughty thoughts, Adult-Contemporary is the outlet for all those real feelings we're supposed to be supressing like the lumbersexuals we really are. If your old friend Bottle is secretly a cross between Norm and Cliff, then McDonald is as good a doppelganger as i can think of. He's smooth and funky, and i can't pretend he's not appealing in the proper context. As you should have expected, Cheers.