LOVG Grandes Exitos: Predictable but Decent Hits Collection from La Oreja de Van Gogh...
Written: Oct 28 '09
Product Rating:
Pros: Great songs pulled from classic LOVG studio albums
Cons: You've heard 'em all before, and there's more you want to hear...
The Bottom Line: Just in case you don't already own all the great songs LOVG recorded in the past decade, here's a "greatest hits" compilation album for you!
mrkstvns's Full Review: Lovg: Grandes Exitos by La Oreja De Van Gogh
Just like the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening, the record industry has its own predictable timetable for releasing live albums, hits collections, and even the occasional insultingly bad remix collection. You can practically set your watch by it!
But just like watches sometimes run fast or slow, La Oreja de Van Gogh seems to release more high-quality studio albums and fewer fluff filler albums than most groups do. They're not immune to it, they just seem to do less of it and, if their Grandes Exitos album is any indication, to do a BETTER job as well. Listening to LOVG Grandes Exitos is a pleasant way to spend an hour and a great way to become familiar with the group's best (and best-selling) music from the past decade.
About La Oreja de Van Gogh and Their Sound... La Oreja de Van Gogh (LOVG) is one of Spain's hottest pop rock bands. They're immensely talented: writing, performing, and producing their own original material. They're also different from the pack of pop stars in that even though they have are immensely popular, their music is fundamentally very good. Hard to believe, I know, but the truth is as hard to ignore as the sombrero on Vicente Fernandez's head.
The band is led by the sexy, suave singer Amaia Montero, backed up by Pablo Benegas on guitar, Alvaro Fuentes on bass, Hartiz Garde on drums, and Xabi San Martin on the keyboard. The group got its start in 1996, but wouldn't actually release their debut album until 2 years later with the 1998 debut of Dile al Sol. They followed it up in 2000 with Viaje de Copperpot, then Lo Que Te Conte Mientras Te Hacias la Dormida (2003), Guapa (2007), and A Las Cinco en el Astoria (2008).
The band has a big, bright, bold signature sound and I always think their music appeals most to the kind of listener who enjoys the fun, highly engaging kind of eighties hits that you heard from girl brands like the Bangles, the Go Gos, Bananarama or maybe even Belinda Carlisle. You know what I mean....the boppin' hits like "Manic Monday", "We Got the Beat", "Our Lips Are Sealed" or "I'm So Excited".
I could easily imagine La Oreja de Van Gogh coming out with something new and very Spanish that incorporated throwbacks to any of those classic 80s hits.
Maybe the reason I dig on La Oreja de Van Gogh so much is because, in today's era of bland pop, it's so refreshing to hear a group that can infuse energy and fun into their music the way really GOOD pop hits have always done.
I like La Oreja de Van Gogh. I think you will too...and a good "best of" compilation might be a place to start. So, without further ado, let's pop open a chilly brewski and slide the CD into the changer and give it a listen!
Hittin' the Hits... Grandes Exitos has a great selection of LOVG's biggest hits --- both the blisteringly fast high energy house rockers as well as the slow shuffling ballads and lightly reflective tunes.
As always, its the house-rockin' tunes that I like best, and I think LOVG must agree with me since they tend to start their albums with high energy anthems that nail the top spots on radio airplay charts.
Cuidate nailed the charts for LODVG when it first came out, and its been an enormously popular hit on both sides of the Atlantic ever since the day it was released. It's easy to hear why. The tune has an infectious knocking beat that seems to beg for some serious foot tapping and finger thrumming. It's catchy. The lyrics are great and the chorus has a kind of fervent insistence that reminds me of Nena's mid-80s hit song, 99 Luftballoons. Awesome chorus though, that's what guarantees this song's success. Awesome. You can't help but sing along when you hear the signature change up...."cierra la puerta, ven, y sientate cerca, que tus ojos me cuentan que te han visto llorar"... CATCHY! And with Amaia's staccato delivery punctuating every word with a bullet, it's a magnificent masterpiece of pure pop.
El 28 was the group's very first big hit back in 1998 when it pushed the group's debut album, Dile al Sol onto the European charts. It's proof that the group got the pop-hit formula down pat. The song has an elegant simplicity of simple lyrics lying on a simple workaday experience --- standing around waiting for the bus. But with its fast paced, rolling drums, Amaia's amazingly dynamic yet sultry vocal style, and of course, an incessantly repeated simple chorus that invites a guy to just sing right along, the song was doomed to succeed.
LODVG's artistry is, in my opinion, most apparent on their B sides, and it's the non-hit tracks where they can spread their wings and show that they are most certainly not just like every other pop act. In fact, they have a kind of self-deprecating tune called Pop that's just a light-hearted, fun poking, jab at the whole pop-hit generating musical machine. It's a fun song. Sound-wise, the tune is full of Eddy Grant throwbacks to Electric Avenue, complete with far too much techno-moog-keyboard junk, but lyrically, it's full more like Joe Walsh's Life's Been Good. 2-cent translation: "you're the queen of pop, a nameless diva, a peak of illusion..." What's a little good-natured cynicism between friends, eh?
I do love those faster, zestier, dance oriented pop tracks --- and I especially love the bouncy sounding Geografia with its whimsically romantic dreams of invented geographies of love --- it's a wonderfully upbeat song that manages to tap into the ever-popular pop themes of young romance, while deftly side-stepping the usual traps of sickly sappiness and triteness. It's mature and sophisticate, while still being innocent and romantic.
A lot of the great house rocker jams come off the group's earlier albums, but Muneca de Trapo, from Guapa, is a refreshing exception that proves the rule. It's a light-hearted, spritzy feeling pop tune that I think draws influences more from the group's Viaje de Copperpot era than from the current era.
La Oreja de Van Gogh is one of the few groups whose slow songs I enjoy and respect as much as the bolder house rockers. I think it's because the group has an intelligent perspective of reality when they do love songs, and they also know that slow songs don't have to be boring, "been there, done that, bored me to tears" death marches through tedium and predictability (as they are for 99.999999% of all pop artists on the market).
This Grandes Exitos album includes some of LOVG's most intelligent and finely crafted slower songs. Like Paris. LOVG released this tune as a single, but you never really hear it on the radio, not in Europe, not in the Americas. I'm not surprised. It's too intelligent and finely crafted to be appreciated by a mass market. I'd have been more surprised to hear that the world loved it. My respect for LOVG goes up when they include tracks like Paris on their "greatest hits" collection.
I normally don't care for sappy ballads, but if I'm gonna have 'em, I want 'em to cut into my soul like a stone honed razor sharp stilletto. I want 'em to sound like Rosas. This is a ballad --- just not a stupid one that sounds like every other ballad ever done. I love the music on this one, and the way that the delicately delivered lyrics just work aural magic on my eardrums. The song is innovative and sharp, though it does carry hints of REM (reminds me vaguely of Man on the Moon). Hey, baby! I'm not losin' touch...
Cuentame al Oido (Say it in my Ear) is a soft, slow, romantic kind of song that would probably drive me bonkers if it weren't for the rolling percussions and the catchy low-to-high delivery style of the refrain, "..y ese beso a mi en el tiempo..." I especially like the sultry sound of Amaia's voice on this very sexy and seductive sounding track. I like it quite a bit more than songs like La Playa, which did garner some enormous airplay and sales stats for the band, even though it's not my kind of pop love song: La Playa is very much in the formulaic young love mold, thematically, and its lyrics of surf, sand, sun, and gentle hugs pull at the nostalgic heartstrings like that sappy frolicking opening scene in the movie, Grease. Uuuuf! Gag me with a sand shovel!
What I'd have Liked to Have Heard... LOVG: Grandes Exitos is a well-blended collection of 16 of the band's biggest hits spanning an entire decade --- a decade over which they released a total of 65 new compositions. Simple math tells me that 3/4 of the group's material didn't make the "best of" cut, which leaves fans like you and me with lots of fodder for water cooler chit-chat about what "should have been there!"
I've got my thoughts on some favorite LOVG tunes that I'd have included if only I was the person wearing the producer hat. Mostly, I'd have included more of the faster, harder, more rockin' and rollin' kind of tunes. Un Mundo Mejor rocks my world because it is sharper, bolder, and deeper than most of the group's songs. It kicks off with an understated guitar riff and pensive vocals that are kind of a throw back to Duran Duran's Rio, but with lyrics filled with vision and hope and optimism. It's a very positive sounding song that's a joy to listen to. I'd have also included Deseos de Cosas Imposibles because I think the tune was just born to be a hit. It's fast, it's exciting, it's a yin and yang of opposites colliding. It's an emotional rollercoaster of love and devotion and hints of treachery.
I might also include one more slower tune that's really cool: El Libro, off their Dile al Sol album. It was never a real big hit for LOVG, but I like it's mellow pace, its faint scent of refreshing sea breeze, its lazy afternoon feel, and its cerebral sense of imagery and lyrical depth. So yeah, there's at least 40 songs that LOVG released over the past decade that they didn't pick up for their Grandes Exitos album, but on the whole, I think they got the biggest and boldest hits, though if it were me, I'd have added at least three more.
Bottom Line... LOVG: Grandes Exitos is a solid, yet predictable hits collection culled from the band's first 10 years of studio releases. It's got a good mix of their high energy rock-oriented hits as well as a smattering of their slower-paced pop hits. The mix gives an accurate perspective on the group's sound and artistry and is an excellent place to start if you'd like to hear what one of Spain's most popular performers is all about.
Tale of the Tracks... Sixteen latin power pop hit songs on a single CD...what's not to like? Here's what you'll hear...
1. Cuidate (from El Viaje de Copperpot) 2. 20 De Enero (from Lo Que Te Conte Mientras Te Hacias la Dormida) 3. El 28 (from Dile al Sol) 4. Paris (from El Viaje de Copperpot) 5. La Playa (from El Viaje de Copperpot) 6. Muneca De Trapo (from Guapa) 7. Puedes Contar Conmigo (from Lo Que Te Conte Mientras Te Hacias la Dormida) 8. Rosas (from Lo Que Te Conte Mientras Te Hacias la Dormida) 9. Dulce Locura (from Guapa) 10. Cuentame Al Oido (from Dile al Sol) 11. Vestido Azul (from Lo Que Te Conte Mientras Te Hacias la Dormida) 12. Pop (from El Viaje de Copperpot) 13. Geografia (from Lo Que Te Conte Mientras Te Hacias la Dormida) 14. Mariposa (from El Viaje de Copperpot) 15. En Mi Lado Del Sofa 16. Soledad (from El Viaje de Copperpot)
More La Oreja de Van Gogh... Want to read some more reviews about one of Spain's hottest pop rock bands ever? Here ya go!
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