Not being especially familiar with his solo discography myself, I wanted to spend time with something objectively middle-aged, but before he got sober and achieved “Modfather” status. The Jam are perhaps his most iconic band but there is not consensus among fans or critics as to which Weller album is his definitive statement. Some albums are more famous than others, though not by much. He has released twenty eight studio albums and dozens of EPs and singles (also, he has eight kids). It must also be said that Paul Weller is quite prolific. Everything his does is credible and full of craft. It is almost as though he studies to become a master electrician and excels at the trade for a few years and then decides he will go to school to become a surgeon and succeeds at that only to, then, a few years later, teach himself color theory and become a tremendous watercolorist. The proficiency and difficulty of these shifts are hard to overstate. And yet Weller could make them quickly and competently. When he mastered the form and the limitations began to constrain him, he tuned again into Orchestral Folk Rock. When the fury of punk was no longer a useful musical tool, he turned hard left and formed a Neo-Soul band. And when he feels like he has mastered something, he will move forward. He is always, wholly intent on improving. But Paul Weller was relentless in his efforts to improve. If he retired in his mid-twenties he would have been a legend in England. He formed The Jam when he was fourteen and released a mature and important record (“In The City”) when he was eighteen. Like the others, Weller’s natural gift for songwriting is unmistakable. The other way in which the Weller / Springsteen comparison is apt is the way in which the deliberately and deeply tackle a style or sound and then move on. He was a pioneer in this way and would open the mansion doors for others - namely Blur and Oasis - who owed an enormous stylistic debt to Paul Weller. Before Paul Weller, there may not have been a popular English artist to have crossed the Atlantic who sounds so English. His accent is in no way affected by the music. Part of this is that Paul Weller, unlike nearly every major English band before him, sings like an Englishman. Plenty of people know the Jam - “they had that song in Billy Elliot, right”? Fewer know The Style Council - “kind of complicated New Wave Soul, right?” But only the true Anglophiles in America are fluent in Weller’s solo career. On the other hand, there are major cities in America where Paul Weller might not sell out a large room. Paul Weller plays to massive crowds on his home turf. He scored dozens of Top 40 hits in the UK and Australia with those groups, and his solo albums, which reliably come every two to three years, are also significant commercial events. Weller fronted two massive English bands, The Jam and The Style Council. Paul Weller is a fair English corollary for The Boss. Bruce Springsteen was a decidedly American artist singing decidedly American stories. Eventually, I learned that this claim mainly meant that in America Bruce would play stadiums, while he would play arenas in most other countries. As a kid who saw “Dancing In The Dark” ten times a day on MTV, that seemed hard to fathom. In the 80s, people would often say that Bruce Springsteen was not a massive star outside of the US.
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