(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros. Records)
Mon 12 May 2025 19:00, UK
Not every band can keep up that sense of authenticity whenever they go into the studio to craft a new record. While everyone should have their finger on the pulse of what’s happening in music whenever they write new songs, there’s a difference between making music that artistically satisfies them and creating songs that are intended to get on the radio by any means necessary. And while Rod Stewart’s voice is one of the greatest vocals in rock and roll history, he knew that there were some moments where he overstepped his bounds and started to not do right by his fans.
Throughout most of the 1970s, though, it looked like there was nowhere to go but up for Stewart. He had spent years trying to make it with The Faces, and while the opportunity to sing alongside someone like Jeff Beck is an offer no one could have refused, Stewart was far more interested in seeing where he went when making something like ‘Maggie May’.
Although the song that would make him a star wasn’t even supposed to be a single, there was something about the acoustic approach to the song as well as his raspy vocals that made every single person relate to it. No one may have had the exact same experience that Stewart had, but a tale of heartache like this is never going to go out of style as long as there are still hearts yet to be broken.
But around the turn of the decade, Stewart’s form of rock and roll wasn’t exactly being looked at as cool anymore. Most people had learned how to deal with blues rockers like Eric Clapton in the late 1970s, but as soon as the punk movement started bubbling up out of the English clubs, there was only two routes for most artists to go down: either go pop or get out of the fucking way.
Stewart did find another avenue as a pop star, though, and that’s something he embraced with everything he had. The idea of that rasp selling on pop radio may have been a tough sell back in the days of Every Picture Tells a Story or even Truth, but in turned out that there were people around the world that couldn’t get enough of Stewart working on something a bit more glossy like on ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’.
Despite the massive sales, many rock fans were incredibly disappointed with this era of Stewart’s career, and Steart himself would readily agree with them looking back, saying, “I may have been getting too big for my own boots, started believing my own press, the sex symbol and all that. I was getting very cheap and tarty.”
In all fairness to Stewart’s assessment of his work, he never phoned it in when he made his new records. ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’ is still considered one of the worst disco sell-out tracks by scores of music fans, but you can’t deny that Stewart doesn’t sing his heart out as he’s writhing around on the floor in the music video.
Even if Stewart’s fans weren’t happy with him transitioning into this kind of style, it was hardly a bad thing to watch him succeed in the next generation, either. There might be some listeners who gave up on him completely the minute that they heard a glossy synth on one of his albums, but it’s okay to be a fan of everything off of Gasoline Alley and manage to find something to like in ‘Young Turks’ as well.
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