Sweet Revenge

Ryuichi Sakamoto | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 27, 1994)
• Original Release Date: 1994
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Elektra / Wea
• ASIN: B000008MX2
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #71,657 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You never know what to expect from Ryuichi., November 14, 2005

By 

Kerry Garrett (Winston-Salem, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sweet Revenge (Audio CD)

I had listened to Mr. Sakamoto since YMO days. I went to see Marry Christmas Mr. Lawrence for him not Bowie. If you are going to rate any of his works on anything else he has done then you completely miss the point. Sakamoto's music is different every album. Heartbeat and Sweet Revenge are similar but not the same. Sweet Revenge took the culture of the world and compressed it down into some of the smoothest beats the world had ever heard. This album is a pinnacle of the time and one of my favorite CDs from the 90s. Sakamoto left this style behind and went on to make some more fabulous albums. He knows that genius cannot be repeated.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One to skip?, February 13, 2005

By 

Hilary A. Hatfield - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sweet Revenge (Audio CD)

It's hard to believe anyone worth their words would consider this piece of work by Sakamoto the 'one to skip'. It is also considerably puzzling that anyone would rate 'Smoochy' or 'Soundbytes' higher than 'Sweet Revenge'. 'Sweet Revenge' is truly sweet indeed. Intelligent, inventive; Sakamoto takes advantage of using a musical style that is both complex and approachable at the same time. It wouldn't be hard for anyone to enjoy simply as background music but with Sakamoto, the surface is just the beginning. Lyrically, he slides in weighty concepts and spiritual enlightenment into this package that is at first just a pretty face. 'Same dream, same destination' is such an example. If you don't spend time with this piece, you won't get all that it offers.

'SR' is possibly Sakamoto's finest hour in this genre of exploration.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sakamoto at the Top of His Pop Game, May 23, 2004

By 

mactra (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sweet Revenge (Audio CD)

Sweet Revenge is an amazingly sophisticated album in which Sakamoto sets the distinctive and heart-rending chordal and harmonic ideas of his soundtrack work to trip-hop and neo-bossa-nova beats. The songs are fronted by a succession of guest vocalists who each contribute lyrics which add up to an amazingly coherent whole--a mature meditation on love, longing, conflict, revenge and regret. As usual, Sakamoto was ahead of his time. By spotlighting the deep poetry of J-ME and Latasha Natasha Diggs, this 1994 album anticipated by years the introspective hip-hop diva trend popularized by Lauryn Hill.

This is a moody album, by turns dark and sublime. It seems to age better than his equally brilliant 80s pop efforts like Neo-Geo, which can sound pretty dated in spots. With this in mind, I'll venture that this is Sakamoto's best pop album since YMO. Another reviewer here seems put off by the slow tempos, but there are far too many musical and lyrical ideas at work in this CD for it to be dismissed as mere mood music.