Harry Connick Jr. - 25


Ladies, and man-ladies, it occurs to me that this time last year i was right in the thick of saying mean things about Barbara Mandrel and The Oak Ridge Boys. Sure, i could just repost some of those essays while i battle through this winter funk of not wanting to live in a world where Capitalism, Socialism, Marxism, and Communism are so nonsensically tossed around that even the Brookings Institution can't figure out what the hell people are talking about, and Denmark says "please stop calling us a Socialist country, because we aren't one." But, that's the universe you all apparently love to live in now, so i actually went and found 3 more Christmas CDs hiding in my collection. We're gonna save those, and instead go to crazytown. I also have three Harry Connick Jr. albums.

No Bottle, please, don't do it!

Don't tell me what not to do, there's an entire crate of records i deemed unacceptable to review last year. If brain damage is what you're serving for dinner, then i'm bringing potluck!

I wish i had his best selling album because... yep you guessed it, it's a Christmas album, but i don't, so i can't, and i won't. He's from New Orleans, he's technically a person, let's find out if i can survive three nights in a row of whatever kind of jazz adjacent music he sings. 

First up is his 1992 album "25." You know i was joking earlier, right? I not at all secretly love crooners, and he's lovely. Repeatedly naming your albums after how old you are is about as questionable as the opening of track two (the first 40ish seconds are little more H. Jon Benjamin than anyone could be prepared for, [how many of you will actually get that joke?]), but it's pretty hard to say he's ridiculous or terrible, but also equally impossible to call him a subtle or nuanced piano player. Harry is a piano smasher through and through, but a charming one.

This is 99% solo piano and singing (with a few guests and a full combo track at the end), and a lot of it was seemingly impromptu and unrehearsed. 

I know i ragged on the reused "here's how old i am" concept, but it's actually a good concept for random stuff. Here's what interested him when he was 25, i can't hate on that too much 'cause at least it's honest.

See, that wasn't so bad. We can do 2 more nights of Hairy Croonick. I mean, it's not like he made a funk album or anything.....

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