Customer Reviews

Soap Opera

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This album is simply fantastic. I am a fan of late 60's Kinks (Something Else, Village Green, Arthur, etc.), and I have always regarded the early 70's Kinks as a "lesser product". However, with the remastered reiussue of this record, I have come to appreciate this record as a minor masterpiece. The themes are all cliches (about the "boredom" of marriage, the "monotony" of corporate life, etc.), but the lyrics are so charming and clever that the cliches seem excusable. It's campy, sometimes cloying, and often borders on Spinal Tap inanity. And that is okay. "Everybody's a Star" sounds a bit like ELO's "Do Ya?" with silly horns. "Ordinary People" is so condescending it is delicious. Did I catch myself tapping my toes and humming to "Rush Hour"? Yes, I did! This album is just great! "Nine to Five", "Have Another Drink", and "Underneath the Neon Sign" are all solid songs which have, perhaps, already been done before, but are all worthy of the Ray Davies cannon. "Holiday Romance" is an absolutely ridiculous tune about "getting lucky" (or ALMOST getting lucky) on a pathetic holiday at a beachside resort.

Finally, the album's cornerstone is "You Make It All Worthwhile". This song is truly among Ray Davies top 20. It is a slightly Monty Python-esque ditty (a la "Princess Marina"), about a wife being hurt by her husband's comments about her cooking. The poignant element of this song is that I truly sense that Ray Davies admires the folks who have the courage to be "ordinary people". Ray Davies walked the line between being a lurid rock 'n' roll egomanic and a sensitive "everyman". This is only one of the albums contradictions. I scratch my head every time I listen to the album wondering if the album is truly a subtle masterpiece or an obnoxious "my lifestyle is better than yours" manifesto. Jeepers...this album is just great.

Just don't tell anyone how much you love it, or you won't be cool anymore...

Soap Opera was widely criticized upon its 1975 release, and certainly it bore little in common with the trademark Kinks sound that established them initially. Actually, the Kinks as a band are somewhat in the background on this one. There are female backing singers at times and horn arrangements here and there. It sounds much more like a Ray Davies solo project, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just different.

If you're expecting something like "You've Really Got Me Now" or "Destroyer" and have little openness toward music beyond those boundaries, you will probably dislike Soap Opera. On the other hand, if you appreciate a catchy song regardless of style, you may well love this concept album as it has a lot going for it.

The premise of Soap Opera is that a rock star trades places with an ordinary man (Norman), stepping into his life, living at his house, going to his job at the office-all the while gathering material for his songs: "I'm immortalizing his life / And I'll even sleep with his wife / For the sake of art." As the joke goes, someone's got to do it. It's hard not to smile when the Ray Davies character puts forth his "noble sacrifice."

In parts, this is an unbelievably campy CD, but it suits the material well. "Ordinary People" and "You Make It All Worthwhile" are just such numbers, but they're so infectious it's hard not to have them running through your head for days. Both are standout tracks. In the latter, Norman's wife and the Star character (Davies) have a brief squabble over her offering to serve shepherd's pie for dinner, which is far from a favorite of the singer's. But he graciously relents to eat it--for the sake of art, of course.

"Nine To Five" is a beautiful ballad about the boredom of working at the office. There are songs about heading to work in rush hour and heading to the pub afterward to unwind. Even Norman gets a turn to sing as he realizes at the end that he must give up his rock star dreams and become once again just "A Face in the Crowd."

There are a lot of musical styles represented here. "Holiday Romance" sounds like it belongs in an old Fred Astaire movie while "Everybody's A Star," "Can't Stop the Music" and "Ducks on the Wall" are more typical rockers.

Soap Opera is a celebration of the mundane. But it's far from mundane itself. This is a truly enjoyable album if you're open for something that differed from both the good early Kinks stuff and the outstanding late seventies Kinks offerings like Sleepwalker and Misfits that followed the concept album period. As for me, I think this is a great album.

and do you know what they recommended to me? They thought I should buy Alanis Morrissette! Man, I don't know who they think they're talking to, but I'll tell you this, the KINKS have nothing in common with Ms Morrissette. The Kinks are good. So anyway, let me start this review off by assuring you that anyone who says this album isn't any good doesn't know what they're talking about about. Ray was at an artistic peak---which seems to happen every 24 hours---with Soap Opera. He has the hubris and talent to tell the story of Norman(you and me???) who dreams of being famous. But what's truly amazing about Soap Opera is that Ray pulls it off! The songs not only fit into the concept but they can be listened to on their own. "A Face In The Crowd" and "A Holiday Romance" could easily fall onto a best of the Kinks compilation. All the songs on this album are personal and poignant. If you want the best of the 70s Kinks, then this is the cd for you.

Although I am a long time fan of the Kinks it is only in the past year that I have listened to almost all of their albums - and they have quite a few. Owned LPs of their Greatest Hits, Arthur, and Kink Kronikles and later got Schoolboys in Disgrace (another great Kinks album). Listening to more of their albums has been a pleasure this past year.
"Soap Opera" is to the Kinks what "The Who Sell Out" is to the Who... Off the wall (even for the Kinks) and brilliant.
My favorite on the CD is You Make It All Worthwhile. Funny yet heart warming.

This is my second favorite rock opera (after Quadraphenia). It is a very clever story about an ordinary man named Norman who lives a very mundane life so he re-creates himself into believing he is really a rock star living his lifestyle for researching new song material. This would be a great album for the Boston Rock Opera to recreate, especially since the story is so straightforward and it already contains witty dialogue between Norman and his loving wife. Listening to this brought back many memories. Highly recommened!

I love this album every song is good.Also,every track is based around a normal working class guy called Norman.Then,a starmaker steps into his life.To make him a star.To do this he invades his body,work,and his love life.So you see it does'nt just have great songs it also has a storyline throughout the whole album.Once again all the songs are good but the one's that stand out the most are Starmaker,When Work Is Over,Holiday Romance,and my favorite song on the album You Make It All Worthwile.Those are the best but once again there all good.This was extremely cast away from all the mainstream public.A number of kinks fans didn't like this album either.I can't see why it's pure kinks material.And then some just don't understand the complecity of the kinks or this great album.Well,anyway GSTK!To all the kinks fans out there who know what that means!

More so than any other Kinks album, Soap Opera is probably the most underrated album they ever released. Perhaps that is because it followed Preservation ACT I & II, in which Ray Davies sounded a little overwhelmed by his own conceptual narrative. Here, Ray tames his narrative zeal a little and concentrates more on the musical end of it. As a result, the Kinks produce a rollicking rock opera that strikes an important balance between the storytelling and the playing, which Dave Davies, John Dalton, John Gosling, and Mick Avory do with finesse. The predominance of the female backup vocalists on Soap Opera might be a bother to a few Kinks fans, but they work surprisingly well in the context of the story and the songs. The music has a little bit of everything, from music hall (The Ordinary People, Holiday Romance), to sentimental ballads (Nine To Five, You Make It All Worthwhile), to blazing rockers (Rush Hour Blues, Ducks On The Wall), and even a killer rock and roll anthem (You Can't Stop The Music) especially tailored for Ray and company. The bonus tracks are fairly superfluous, although hardcore Kink fans will probably want to have these. Although Soap Opera perhaps should have been a Ray Davies solo project, that does not detract from the fact that it is a great, if misunderstood, rock and roll album.

This is easily one of my favorite Kinks albums. Incredibly catchy tunes, self-mocking story and lyrics, campy theatrics--it's all here. Why this album is so overlooked I can't understand. The music is dazzling; every single song has some kind of hook that makes you want to hear it again. This is undoubtedly a five-star album. Buy it!

This is the best example of the Kinks' RCA-era concept album period. Savaged by critics, it is nevertheless a well-produced set of songs with catchy tunes, lush production, and a story-line that makes sense. "A Face in the Crowd" ranks among Ray Davies' very best and most affecting compositions. Ignore the critics and buy this one!

this album has gotten a LOT of bad press. here at amazon.com, people only tend to write reviews of albums that they enjoy, so if you're only looking here, you might not really grasp how poorly this album is regarded in the kinks katalog (sorry). according to AMG this album is about as bad as the disasterous 80's era "hard rock" kinks albums. why such toxic press? well, "a soap opera" was a product of that period in kinks history when davies was consumed with the idea of the "concept album". but, unlike the "preservation" project (which SHOULD have been great, but was too messy to be really effective) "a soap opera" is more focused and personal, concentrating on one or two characters, rather than an entire ensemble cast.

the concept here seems to be something like this: a big rockstar wants to record a song (or album) about being a "normal, working class" person. so he trades places with a man named norman, and we hear as the main character has to adjust to the mundane life of the everyman. tracks like "rush hour blues", "nine to five", "have another drink", and others, all perfectly convey the numbing drudgery of the clock punching joe who lurches through the motions from day to day. these aren't really original themes, but davies communicates them with a genuine sense of empathy that, in the hands of a lesser songwriter, would devolve into caricature or condescending pity.

personally, i'm not a big fan of concept albums. i think that they're bloated and self-indulgent, and i associate them with "prog rock", which i hate. what saves "a soap opera" is that it's not impossible to listen to the songs on their own, out of the context of the larger story. doing so makes the songs seem a little redundant thematically, but it doesn't rob them of their quality.

the highlights include:

"underneath the neon sign" - a ballad lamenting the rise of the giant post-industrial cityscape at the expense of nature (a theme that would've been perfectly at home on "...village green"), complete with a ridiculous, but charming, horn drenched bridge.

"holiday romance" - a classic kinks "music hall" type number that would've fit perfectly on "muswell hillbillies".

"you make it all worthwhile" - an overtly sentimental, but still very touching song. the staccato strings during the choppy, dramatic verse, contrast beautifully with the calm and ease of the chorus, where the main character explains to his wife that, even though his job is driving him mad, she does exactly what the title suggests.

even if you weren't impressed by the preservation albums, i'd still recommend picking this album up. by kinks standards, it may not be the best album of their career, but it's still head and shoulders above most of the other pompous dreck that was being recorded in 1975.