Dec 9, 2009 0
MONM10 Malcolm McLaren: Fans
I needed something to get the feeling of that last album off me. Malcom McLaren’s Fans is (I will quote the ENTIRE wikipedia article on it):
an attempt by to fuse opera with 1980s R&B and contains adaptations of pieces from famous operas such as Madam Butterfly and Carmen.
As an “attempt”, I’d say it was successful. It’s a pretty safe bet to say this probably sounded bonkers in 1985. Now, we’re pretty blasé about mashups and genre bouncing. It’s rare for early attempts to sound so well put together, I rather enjoyed the listen. I never really listened to much of Malcolm McLaren’s music, but that’s going to change. It’s probably of interest to some of you that the producer, Stephen Hague went on to produce The Pet Shop Boys first album and multiple albums by New Order as well as other synthpop bands.
Fans is a surprisingly strong album, for all it’s pretense. I’ll be listening to this again. I had a hard time choosing a song to link to for this, so I went with the most recognizable of the operas.
And here’s the video for Madam Butterfly:
You said.