One person’s view: “This makes his rendition of ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay’ seem almost listenable.” – paddlesteamer @ Rate Your Music
The public’s view: 1.38 / 5.00, the worst #1 hit of 1991 and many years thereafter
No music personality could have made a better punching bag for an Office Space joke than Michael Bolton. Not Phil Collins, not Richard Marx, not even Peter Cetera. But despite all of the ridicule, Bolton possesses a huge army of vociferously loyal fans and has sold tens of millions of albums. Let’s examine the mystery of Michael Bolton and the divergence of views that he provokes.
Bolton’s good qualities are self-evident. He has a hell of a voice, and he sings every song like his next meal depends on it. He put out some decent hard rock music before the record label gurus convinced him that adult contemporary and blue-eyed soul were more lucrative. He once wrote a song with Bob Dylan. His sense of humor is superb, as evidenced by his Lonely Island collaboration “Jack Sparrow”. So why does he get so much disrespect from the critics?
It’s mainly his relationship with ‘60s soul music that has gotten him into trouble. Most of us are capable of simply admiring a great work of art or music without seeking to improve upon it, but whenever Bolton hears a classic R&B tune he is motivated to record his own version. He just can’t help himself. It’s an eccentric and almost antisocial compulsion that he has, like how some people can’t resist doodling facial hair onto every photo in the copy of Vogue in their dentist’s waiting room. “Georgia on My Mind” doesn’t need an interpretation by a white guy from Connecticut any more than Cindy Crawford needs a goatee, but we live in a world full of magazine vandals and Michael Bolton so we must all find ways to cope.
Bolton’s throatiness, which has been compared to Joe Cocker’s, also invites complaints. Cocker came by his raw voice naturally, by smoking three packs of cigarettes, downing a bottle of Wild Turkey, and eating a bucket of gravel and broken glass prior to each performance. There’s no evidence that Bolton follows a similar regime, or that he’s anything but a clean-living singer of songs for moms and grandmas. He would probably be eligible for honorary membership in the Mormon Church. Thus, his rasp has an inauthenticity to it that irks some listeners.
Then there was the unpleasantness with the Isley Brothers. Bolton decried the copyright infringement verdict against him over “Love Is a Wonderful Thing”, prompting Entertainment Weekly to ask critics for their reaction to the case in 1994. Even those who said Bolton was innocent of plagiarism used this as an opportunity to trash him. This seemed to be the turning point at which, in the minds of the establishment, he went from being a Grammy-winning hero to an unoriginal bore. His cover of “When a Man Loves a Woman” was certainly a huge factor in that change of sentiment.
“When a Man Loves a Woman” demands passion and energy, so Bolton would seem to be a good fit for it. He simply does not have a “reduced power” mode when he’s singing. The drawback to this is that it’s hard for him to bring the song to a dramatic conclusion after he’s already been pouring his heart out from the very first line. There’s no place to go but down, or at least sideways.
It’s fair to say that Michael Bolton’s singing style isn’t for everybody, but I personally don’t hear a huge difference in quality between the beloved Percy Sledge version of “When a Man Loves a Woman” and Bolton’s widely despised version. That is probably the most contrarian opinion I will ever express on this blog, and is further proof that I am not a real music critic. However, let’s keep in mind that Otis Redding’s widow raved over Bolton’s treatment of “(Sittin’ on the) Dock of the Bay”, so I guess she’s a contrarian too.
Do I celebrate the guy’s entire catalog? No, I wish he had done more rock tracks like “Fools Game” and not so many ballads. But I also think that the extraordinarily bad reviews of some of Bolton’s songs, and particularly of “When a Man Loves a Woman”, are absurd. You’re telling me that an all-time classic composition turns into a disaster worse than “Hangin’ Tough” the moment someone oversings it a bit? Get real!