Twenty Feet from Stardom (***)

Something like a companion piece to Standing in the Shadows of Motown, a documentary about the unheralded musicians who backed up 1960s hits by the Supremes, the Four Tops, the Miracles, the Temptations, and other stars, this shines a spotlight on the backup singers of American popular music, mostly the rock and R&B of the 1960s–'80s. With DIY home-recording equipment, Auto-Tune, and cash-strapped record companies, these are tougher times for backups, but some can still make careers of it.

Movies like this can sometimes be on the dull side because they don’t get beyond testimonies to the wonderfulness of their subjects. The first half has some of that, with Bruce Springsteen (who married his back-up singer), Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger, and Sheryl Crow (a former back-up singer) among those testifying. Sting does too, but we actually get to see him working in the studio with Lisa Fischer, too. Fischer is one of the stars of the second half of the film, which is built around featurettes about a few of the women, but particularly in terms of their efforts at building solo careers. Among the most successful has been Darlene Love, still singing into her 70s and inducted, as a solo artist, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Then there is Merry Clayton, the powerhouse female voice in the Rolling Stones hit “Gimme Shelter,” whose solo efforts in the 1970s met with only modest success. There is the relatively young Judith Hill, a songwriter who worries that too many backup gigs will derail her efforts to be seen as a solo artist. And there is Fischer, who had a moment of Grammy-winning stardom in the 1980s but professes to be happier as, most prominently, the Rolling Stones’ favorite backup singer on tour.

The film is not as revelatory as Standing in the Shadows; a couple of the women (and, with a few exceptions, the subjects are women) speak of their discomfort at being seen, on stage, as sex objects more than performers, but not that much behind-the-scenes dirt gets dished. (That Ike Turner saw himself as a pimp and his backup dancers as “hos” hardly counts as dirt at this late date.) Nor is there a ton of technical information about how back-ups are utilized in the recording process. But, for those with an interest in pop music, especially pre-1990 rock, the movie should be entertaining. I was especially taken with old clips of an impossibly young David Bowie, of George Harrison at the Concert for Bangladesh, and of Ray Charles exuberantly singing on television with the Raylettes, who included Clayton.

IMDb link

viewed 7/3/13 7:25 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 7/3/13

Once (***1/4)

A few weeks have passed since I caught this charmer, and it’s continued to grow on me. It’s a brief tale, with music, of a busking guitar player and a Czech girl who meet on the streets of Dublin. I’d call it adorable but that might mean “sappy” to some people, and it’s not at all. The stars, Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, are musician-composers who can act rather than the other way ’round, and they’re responsible for the bulk of the singing and playing. Hansard, a member of the Irish rock band the Frames (and friend of director John Carney) who appeared in The Commitments, gets most of the tunes, which range from pleasantly forgettable to memorably fine. His diminutive costar only performs two of her own songs, but they’re lovely and haunting, her voice beautiful. I wouldn’t want to oversell this movie. It’s short and sweet and unassuming. The story is a simple one about the space between friendship and romance. If you absolutely hate singer-songwriter music, then you won’t like at least 25 minutes of this. But there’s an audience for this kind of movie, one that will absolutely take it to heart, and I hope it finds it.

[reviewed 5/31/07]

IMDB link

link to the soundtrack on Amazon

Music and Lyrics (***1/4)

? Offered the chance to write a single for a Britney-esque pop star, a has-been singer-songwriter (Hugh Grant) recruits a non-professional (Drew Barrymore) to write the lyrics.
+ These two parts seem ideally suited to the strengths of its stars, Grant the awkward-suave songwriter, Barrymore the ditzy-brainy plant waterer. Grant is probably one of the few actors who can work the word “moribund” into a conversation and have it sound natural. But equally crucial to the movie’s success is the music, much of it composed by Fountains of Wayne leader Adam Schlesinger, who also re-created the 1960s sounds of That Thing You Do! The film’s opening is the music video for “Pop! Goes My Heart,” the signature song of the Wham!-like band co-led by Grant’s Alex Fletcher in the 1980s. This segment sets the tone by being both catchy and authentic sounding enough that you can easily believe it would have been a hit when Tears for Fears and Duran Duran ruled the chart. Hugh even sings the songs credited to Alex on screen. Also believable is the waifish pop princess, played by Haley Bennett, who takes most of the other vocals and gets not a few laughs. She’s kooky without being over the top. For writer-director Marc Lawrence, this is a step or three up from the Sandra Bullock vehicles (Forces of Nature, Miss Congeniality, Two Weeks Notice) that form the bulk of his résumé. As with the music, there’s an appealing sincerity to the characters.
- The process whereby Alex turns his plant waterer into his cowriter seems about as unnatural as you’d think it would, and the storyline seems too accelerated.
= ***1/4 Hugh and Drew make beautiful music. It’s more like a fun pop hit than a classic album, though.

IMDB link

reviewed 2/14/07