Thoughts: Bob Dylan was born to sing vengeful music. Things We Said Today sounds a lot more fitting in his voice. The Airborne Toxic Event track was excellent. I always like Mikel's voice in everything. Heart is awful. Billy Joel improved on neither song, but they sounded good. Those are two really crisp songs, though. More credit goes to McCartney than Joel there -- his ear for original riffs is underrated. Chrissie Hynde blew the rest out of the water. Again, good material to work with. And I suspect she would have been paced by Booker T on the bonus tracks, but that doesn't seem to be included and I couldn't find the cover.
You know what, I couldn't agree more about Dylan. That song had such a new dimension to it. I recognized the bitterness in the lyrics SO MUCH MORE because of his voice. Agree about Joel -Carbon copies but with a weaker voice. Chrissie Hynde's Let it Be was pretty darn good. It's a hell of a song to take on. How on earth do you improve upon that? I almost wish it were approached in a completely new way. Okay, you gave it a new guitar solo, but it's really not even that different. I like her though and I believe her voice. It's such a gorgeous song though. I think that gets forgotten because we've all heard it a bazillion times. This is what's potentially cool about an album like this, we get to hear these songs for the first time and rediscover their virtues. Dylan did this. Joel failed at it and Hynde kind of did it.