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Product Description
Track listing
1Tight Connection To My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)
2. Seeing The Real You At Last
3. I'll Remember You
4. Clean Cut Kid
5. Never Gonna Be The Same Again
6.Trust Yourself
7.Emotionally Yours
8.When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky
9. Something's Burning Baby
10.Dark Eyes
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Although it's fair to say all well established artists should have their own well defined style/priniples when it comes to the creative process, the mid - eighties was a very strange time generally on the music front. Bob Dylan's own brand of singer/songwriter ideals at the time was deeply unfashionable and like Mick Jagger, Neil Young and Lou Reed he felt the only way for his music to be heard was to make concessions to the contemporary sounds of the day. The fact that Bob was not on top form in a songwriting sense at that time anyway may be purely coincidental or as a result of feeling completely at odds with the musical climate of the time. Producer Arthur Baker's sound and the general eighties instrumentation was quite uncompatable when revealing the true strengths of Bob's talent.
The opening and closing tracks are my favourites 'Tight Connection To My Heart' and 'Dark Eyes' although the first song was far more effective in its original form when demoed for 'Infidels' as 'Someone's Got A Hold Of My Heart'. It's not necessarily a truly bad album but it is a piece of works which fails to reflect those things that make Bob a unique artist.
'Empire Burlesque' is probably at its most enjoyable if the listener is unaware of Bob's pedigree - it can then be listened to on its own terms and perhaps be occasionally enjoyed.
Unfortunately 'Empire' represented the beginning of a very uninspiring period for Bob in which he'd release 'Knocked Out Loaded', 'Down In The Groove' and the live 'Dylan And The Dead'.
Really though 'Empire Burlesque' is merely a symptom of its time when Bob decided it was probably best to stop swimming against the tide. When the musical landscape changed somewhat in the nineties and singer/songwriters and more traditional sounds were more accepted again Bob once again returned to what he does best and released some cracking albums.
The opening and closing tracks are my favourites 'Tight Connection To My Heart' and 'Dark Eyes' although the first song was far more effective in its original form when demoed for 'Infidels' as 'Someone's Got A Hold Of My Heart'. It's not necessarily a truly bad album but it is a piece of works which fails to reflect those things that make Bob a unique artist.
'Empire Burlesque' is probably at its most enjoyable if the listener is unaware of Bob's pedigree - it can then be listened to on its own terms and perhaps be occasionally enjoyed.
Unfortunately 'Empire' represented the beginning of a very uninspiring period for Bob in which he'd release 'Knocked Out Loaded', 'Down In The Groove' and the live 'Dylan And The Dead'.
Really though 'Empire Burlesque' is merely a symptom of its time when Bob decided it was probably best to stop swimming against the tide. When the musical landscape changed somewhat in the nineties and singer/songwriters and more traditional sounds were more accepted again Bob once again returned to what he does best and released some cracking albums.
25 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Honestly now it has to be asked: what happened to Bob in the 80's. Was he corrupted by the utter banality of the generations art work? Was he cruelly hit on the back of the head with a baseball bat, only to recently recover? Believe me, I exaggerate not - this is bad stuff. Somebody really should have taken him aside and told him to take a listen to some of the stuff from this decade because i'm sure he would have come to his senses fairly quickly. As we have it we are presented with an album full of drum machines, backing vocals that remind me of 60's Diana Ross and drum windups that remind me of Tina Turner ala "The Best", none of which is essentially bad, it's just that none of this suits the soul encompassing songs that Dylan can create.
Particular songs that suffer this is the opening "Tight connection to my heart" which has some of the most painfully nauseating backing vocals I have ever forced my ears to suffer, "Seeing the real you at last" which contains similarly annoying use of trumpets and "I'll remember you" which sound like it belongs on a really bad shmaltzy 80's movie starring Patrick Swayze. It gets better: "Emotionally yours" is actually quite nice. I can imagine this being quite a moving song if it was to be paired down to just a piano led track. As it is we have to listen to some particularly annoying random noises created by some buffoon. "Something's burning, baby" is another such song, suffering less, and it is possible to hear the greatness of Dylan behind some of the mistakes it does contain. It is all worth suffering though for the final "Dark Eyes". Maybe i'm a bit of a traditionalist but i much prefer Dylan left to things he understands. Left to just an acoustic guitar and harmonica this sounds very nice. It's not one of his greatest works but it is a badly needed reminder of what the man is capable of. Still, despite the up sides to this album it will take me a while to recover from being preached at in "Trust Yourself".
PLEASE, IF YOU ARE THINKING OF TRYING DYLAN FOR THE FIRST TIME DO NOT TRY THIS ONE. May I suggest "The Times they are a' changin'" "Blonde on Blonde" "Blood on the Tracks" or the more recent "Time out of mind" which shows that he is still the great songwriter that he always was. I was tempted to throw this away after first listening to it but on second thought it is worth keeping if only because it help to remind me that Dylan is not a God. Just a damn good songwriter when he chooses to be himself.
It will eternally amaze me the riots this man suffered simply because he chose to start using an electric guitar and managed to avoid any ridicule when he seemingly tried to write the soundtrack for Beverly Hills Cop, which is what half of this seems to want to be.
Format:Audio CD
If music lovers new to Dylan are curious about what is meant by "Bob had a bad eighties" then this album should tell them all they need to know. A mixture of terribly dated drum machine thud, poorly mixed vocal (with even more waily backing singers than Street-Legal) and uninspired songwriting make this album very laboured. The cover design even looks like it might have got an A-level Media Studies student a grade D. Thank goodness The Traveling Wilburys were about to rescue the great man from this misjudged foray into ersatz hipness. Definitely his nadir. As for a bad eighties - Infidels and Oh Mercy will more than demonstrate that the story is not quite as simple as that. With Bob it couldn't be could it?
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Too many critics
What are all these people talking about?
Listened to as a collection of new songs at least there's nothing as jarring as Hurricane or Knoxville Girl
Does it really matter... Read more
Listened to as a collection of new songs at least there's nothing as jarring as Hurricane or Knoxville Girl
Does it really matter... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Richard
Not great overall, but some wonderful, typically-Dylan lyrics...
First and foremost, I must confess this album is disappointing, WHEN COMPARED TO OTHER DYLAN OUTINGS, but the album is still a whole lot better than most popular albums around in... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Sam Hopkins
Thump, thump, douche!
For a long time, I found this album almost unlistenable and thought Arthur Baker was a pariah for splashing so much pointless crap over Bob Dylan songs. Read more
Published 3 months ago by street-legal
the empire strikes back
This is one of a number of Bob Dylan albums that are looked down upon by "Dylan purists" i.e. those fans who love his earlier or more famous stuff so much that they scorn anything... Read more
Published 3 months ago by housedoctor
His worst ever
I don't normally like live albums anyway but this must be the worst ever by a talented singer/songwriter just prooves how bad a live album can be thankfully even he has done better... Read more
Published 6 months ago by malmac
A great Bob Dylan album
This is a great Bob Dylan album.This is another another side of Bob Dylan.A new audacious sound to loose him more devotees but in truth the sound of an artist not wanting to repeat... Read more
Published 11 months ago by paulc
Ouch, the eighties....
Mr.Zimmerman certainly did take a few strange turns in the eighties, much like (as the reviewer above notes) other great singer-songwriters. Read more
Published on 29 Jun 2009 by T. Ackerman
Hang your head in shame Mr.Arthur Baker!!!!!
This could have been a great album, but Dylan must have had a brainstorm when he decided to hand it over to Arthur Baker. Read more
Published on 3 Dec 2008 by Stephen Vallely
Dylan's best of the 1980s batch, and vastly underrated.
EMPIRE BURLESQUE is a terrific album. But before I tell you my own impression, let me tell you what helped shape this impression. Read more
Published on 2 Oct 2007 by Mike London
Bob Dylan - Empire Burlesque (Columbia/1985)
I'm not an authority on Dylan, I just like some - not all - of his music. This album is among my favourites of everything he's done, and that's probably because of... Read more
Published on 25 Jan 2006 by "simonoxton"
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