When I was young, before I had ever owned any albums, I heard a song on the radio that really stuck out to me. It really lured me in and became my favorite song for almost that entire year. Shortly after I had heard the song on the radio, I saw a music video for the same song on VH1. The music video was also really cool, and made me love the song even more. Being the young juvenile that I was, I didn’t think twice about looking into this artist’s other material; hell, I didn’t even know the artist’s name until a friend of mine informed me at the local roller-rink. Years later however, I recalled the memories I had of that great song, and being the mature music lover that I was, decided to do a little research and uncover the mysteries of this artist.
Considering you have already seen the title of this review, you already know that the artist in discussion here is Eagle-Eye Cherry. And if you give your mind a little time to delve into your memories, you’ll recall the tune of Cherry’s debut hit “Save Tonight.” There you go. Now that you remember the song and are bobbing your head back and forth to the acoustic, intensity driven greatness, let’s talk about the album that you probably don’t know as much about.
Released to the U.S. in 1998, Desireless was a top seller. Selling over four million copies worldwide, the Eagle-Eye debut was a hit. Although people were lured into purchasing the album mainly for its hit single, it does have a few other gems within its track listing. One of these songs, “Indecision,” is an interesting song in which the lyrical delivery see-saws between soothing storytelling to anger-driven refrains and guitar solos; a cool twist on the typical soul-rock genre song structure. Cherry’s second single, “Falling In Love Again,” holds a great place in the middle of the album, giving the listener a break from the quiet acoustic soul charts and hitting it with a vicious, moody love song. Another great song that really sticks with me is “Conversation,” a song telling about the tragedies of lying to a child. The vocals in this song are touched with just the perfect amount of soul given the emotional weight of hatred and sadness.
After listening to the album a couple times, I realized how similar some of the songs sound in comparison to some of John Mayer’s mellower music. This made me wonder why Eagle-Eye Cherry never got much more recognition. Since the release of Desireless, Cherry has released two more studio albums, both being extremely unsuccessful. This may be because the acoustic sound wasn’t really highly sought after by everyday music listeners until the early 2000s when John Mayer started his rise to fame, reminding people of the overshadowed genre.
Is Desireless a perfect album though? Far from it. With the lyrical flubs within “Rainbow Wings” and “When Mermaids Cry,” and the repetition in songs like “Comatose (In The Arms of Slumber),” Cherry presented us with a pretty average album. In his defense, it was his debut album, and not many artists can successfully pull off something like the Boston debut. Either way, I definitely note the album as an honorable mention, solely for the deep amount of passion put into its construct.
If anything off Desireless seems to pull you in, I encourage you to check out Cherry’s other two albums Living in the Present Future and Sub Rosa. These too have some pretty good tracks worth checking out. In the meantime, go ahead and check this album out with this link to the album on Napster:
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