1) Welcome to Scatland; 2) Scatman's World; 3) Only You; 4) Quiet Desperation; 5) Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop); 6) Sing Now!; 7) Popstar; 8) Time (Take Your Time); 9) Mambo Jambo; 10) Everything Changes; 11) Song of Scatland; Bonus tracks: 12) Hi, Louis; 13) Scatman (Game Over Jazz)
The first album I ever owned and you're never going to make me fall out of love with it.
Key tracks: "Scatman's World", "Quiet Desperation", "Scatman"
This next museum exhibit here, on your left ladies and gentlemen, is the seminal album by the First Artist That I Ever Loved. In the days when various artists hit compilations were my main source of music, Scatman John came with such a force that I begged my parents to buy the album for me. I've lost my old cassette to god knows where but oh boy that cassette was on play so, so very much. Scatman John was my childhood musical hero and I played this album loudly in my bedroom over and over again, singing along to the English words which I didn't even understand.
John stood out in the 90's eurodance scene. He wasn't a handsome shirtless young man paired with a model-perfect lady to sing the choruses. If you look at his music videos he looks completely out of place in them among all the young folks, with his wrinkles, old man mustache and retro garbs. His music was the trendiest thing there was at the time but John himself looked like someone who would have been more in his element in a smoky jazz club band. Which is where he started from, with his drift into the eurodance scene being a series of coincidences with unexpected results.
I'm all grown now and I can see what he was trying to do. He wanted to reach out to us kids. Give a listen through Scatman's World and pay attention to the lyrics. In fact, it's enough if you just pay more attention to the words in his two big hits. John wants world peace. John wants racial equality. John is teaching us to respect our fellow humans no matter the colour, he's teaching us to finish our education and follow a straight and honest path, he wants us to know that we need to leave this world in a good condition for the generations that will eventually follow us. He teaches how we can overcome all our odds if we try. He's telling us about the darker side of life, the homeless and the misjudged, and what we should do to prevent all that. And he is telling us about the magical Scatland where human race will, hopefully, eventually drift towards, where peace and love towards all man reign.
I'm all grown now and I can see what he was trying to do. He wanted to reach out to us kids. Give a listen through Scatman's World and pay attention to the lyrics. In fact, it's enough if you just pay more attention to the words in his two big hits. John wants world peace. John wants racial equality. John is teaching us to respect our fellow humans no matter the colour, he's teaching us to finish our education and follow a straight and honest path, he wants us to know that we need to leave this world in a good condition for the generations that will eventually follow us. He teaches how we can overcome all our odds if we try. He's telling us about the darker side of life, the homeless and the misjudged, and what we should do to prevent all that. And he is telling us about the magical Scatland where human race will, hopefully, eventually drift towards, where peace and love towards all man reign.
He wanted to reach to us kids and tell us about these important lessons in life. What better way to do that than to place his messages over the trendiest, catchiest music of the moment? Of course it's cheesy beyond belief, but John never comes across insincere when he drops these obvious anvils and just about dodges sounding corny as well. He goes for the save-the-world mentality, and he pulls it off. The only unbearably cheesy moment is the closing ballad "Song of Scatland" but even that's almost heartwarming if you can get over just how camp it is. In retrospect, given his untimely loss to cancer, it actually becomes quite touching, hearing the album end in a thank you and a good night.
The songs are still ace. The hit singles are all classics, particularly "Scatman's World" - "Scatman" gets all the nostalgic love and is brilliant as well, but I always felt that "Scatman's World" manages to top it. It uses the same elements but in a more refined fashion; you can almost detect a tinge of bittersweetness to it, and it's that underlining seriousness that really makes for the song's impact. "Quiet Desperation" carries that wistful tone and is a surprisingly, powerfully introspective moment hiding within an eurodance album. The more overt pop songs are great too, of course - the hi-energy "Sing Now!", the sunshine shuffle "Popstar", the obvious back-up single option "Only You". Only the Latin influenced "Mambo Jambo" (because it was law there had to be a Latin song on a 90s pop album) fails to leave much of a positive impression, much like most of these tacked on Latin excursions in eurodance albums. Scatman's World is eurodance in its best bliss - solid beats, 90s house pianos, awesome vintage synth sounds, and of course John's vocals, flicking between the speak-singing and the immortal scatting. The two bonus tracks tacked on to the end of the album are rather terrible, but easily discardable in the digital age.
It is absolutely impossible for me to rate this album in any sort of way that would have any meaning in comparison to all my other ratings, because this is where it all began for me and for that, it will always be a great record for me. I guess the main takeaway for all the people who aren't me is that there's more to the album than "Scatman" and if you find yourself in favour of that song for absolutely any reason, there's an album full of the same vibe that keeps up pretty well to its biggest hit.
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