Word: zoomin
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...album, her critically acclaimed A Rose Is Still a Rose (1998), is another Top 40 smash. Although her output has sometimes been tagged (unfairly, for the most part) as erratic, she has had a major album in every decade of her career, including Amazing Grace (1972) and Who's Zoomin...
...here's another difference: Who's Zoomin' won't have the longstanding success Turner managed with her uneven, mostly convincing comeback record. Turner earned her place atop the music heap last year with a sincere testimonial to love-gone-bad. Franklin fires her bolts at the teeny-weenie crowd and the most that can be said for her is that she succeeds at infantilizing her once proud persona...
...Walden as producer. Walden (who worked with Jeff Beck and helped turn the legendary ax man on to the panacea of disco) here has so little faith in Franklin's raw talents that he keeps drowning her vocals in a sea of special effects. The tracks on Who's Zoomin' skitter back and forth between different styles, from pop to soulful sassiness to coolly hip. The emphasis is always on Walden's pyrotechnical studio tricks...
Variety can be a good thing, but unfortunately, on Who's Zoomin' it feels calculated. The opening cut, the bleach-brained "Freeway of Love," explores adolescent sexuality with all the subtlety of a rubber hygiene implement. And it hardly requires a degree from the Motor City School of Imagery to figure out what Franklin means when she refers to her "pink Cadillac": the phrase does for Springsteen's infamous auto what Sheena's "sugar walls" did for the dextrose concession...
Collaboration is the leitmotif--if there is any at all--on Who's Zoomin'. A bunch of Hot Stars get in on Aretha's Action as if they all wished to exploit (whoops, I mean insure) the Rebirth of a Legend. In addition to Lennox and Stewart, Peter Wolf chimes in for a phony duet (with an obvious nod to Mick and Tina) and Carlos Santana and Clarence Clemons drop by for a pair of specialty solos. It all adds up to what could have been but wasn't. Too bad Franklin doesn't have (just a little...