Ringo Starr may not have much of a voice, but when he sang a song on a Beatle album, it had its own special charm.
'Let's Get It On' is a classic Motown single, endlessly repeatable and always enjoyable.
It didn't matter that Charlie Chaplin may not have been a great director or a great anything else. He made great movies.
On first listening, Joni Mitchell's 'Court And Spark,' the first truly great pop album of 1974, sounds surprisingly light; by the third or fourth listening, it reveals its underlying tensions.
As a performing group, the Beatles began by playing old rock favorites, for dancing, to tough audiences in Liverpool and Hamburg. When they began writing seriously, they discovered that they couldn't compose in the early American rock tradition.
Since her landmark 'Tapestry,' Carole King has both oversimplified and over elaborated that masterful album's style until her music has become something more overtly but less effectively personal.
'Call Me' is not an exceptional Al Green album, but it is as solid as a rock at its center.
In the end, the sign of Aretha Franklin's artistry is that she always leaves her mark - first, on the music, then on us.
