Yeah, i'm with you on that Terry.
I just get pissed off, that it seems a few acts on here seem to be above critique.
I have nothing against Erik as a person, i'm sure he's lovely.
I just dislike his songwriting style greatly. Especially when it's acts I generally love that are then lumped with an entire album written by him.
There's plenty of artists that write in a retro style.
Hell, I love people like Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood, and they at times mimicked the writing or vocal or production styles of their inspirations such as John lennon, Brian Wilson, Roy Orbison or Phil Spector.
In the late 80's, bands like Kiss, Alice Cooper and Aerosmith got on board with having Desmond Child and Diane Warren write for them, and had alot of hired hands helping out in the studio, and that worked for them, and they re-invented themselves in the time, despite sounding alot like the newer bands that were coming onto the scene.
However, for my tastes, people like that are in a totally different league to the likes of Erik Martesson who just comes off as a copy cat.
If he can write a solo album that brims with emotion and personality of it's own, i'll gladly eat my words.
But for now, everything I hear of his sounds like something else. Totally cliche'd, lacking emotion and feel and completely interchangeable.
There are other new writers who write in an "old fashioned" style that certainly do not fall into that trap. I love the works of Chris Antblad, Steve Newman, Tom & James Martin (although, again frontiers ran that well dry after a while, and it again everything began to sound very similar... they are better writing specifically for or with an artist a la Vega or Issa), Jason Pawlak, etc... i think some of todays session guys who appear on everything like Tommy Denander, Eric Ragno, Daniel Flores are top notch...
It's just one guy, who sadly seems to have the monopoly on every album that I may potentially have otherwise liked.
Niv



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2012 08:03PM by nivjourney.