Product Description

When the Bangles' third and final album was released in 1988, a backlash had already begun against the popular Los Angeles power poppers. All four of the Bangles' previous Top 40 hits, excellent though they were, had been written by outside songwriters, and the fact that all four bandmembers were strong songwriters themselves was overlooked by cynics who charged that Susanna Hoffs' pouty beauty was the main reason for the band's commercial success. Unfortunately, corporate marketing decisions to showcase Hoffs by selecting the album's two weakest songs, the faceless "In Your Room" and the soppy "Eternal Flame", as singles, paired with a too-slick production job, doomed the album among the cognoscenti and the band quickly broke up. However, heard with fresh ears, EVERYTHING is a cohesive, mature album with many terrific songs, especially Vicky Peterson's "Glitter Years" and Michael Steele's magnificent "Complicated Girl". An underappreciated album crying out for artistic re-evaluation.

Track Listing

1. In Your Room
2. Complicated Girl
3. Bell Jar
4. Something To Believe In
5. Eternal Flame
6. Be With You
7. Glitter Years
8. I'll Set You Free
9. Watching The Sky
10. Some Dreams Come True
11. Make A Play For Her Now
12. Waiting For You
13. Crash And Burn

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #109349 in Music
• Released on: 1993-04-05
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Import

Customer Reviews

A solid album, but it just seems to lack a little something
I hadn't listened to this album in years, but now I'm remembering why I was a big Bangles fan back in the group's heyday. Everything, their third and final album (until their 2003 reunion album Doll Revolution, that is), is a solid offering featuring one big hit, another track that certainly got radio time (and can now be heard, in co-opted form, as the music in some TV commercial), and a mix of tunes showcasing the diversity of the four girls in the band.

I love Susannah Hoffs - heck, I even went to see her film The Allnighter (sadly, I was the only person in the theater), and many folks probably think she was the lead singer of the band. After all, most of the band's hits featured Hoffs on lead vocals. I think it is important to note, however, that all four members of The Bangles made an equal contribution to each album. All four also played their own instruments, which was still something of a rarity among girl groups in the mid-1980s. Hoffs sang lead on four songs on Everything, including Eternal Flame and In Your Room. Eternal Flame was a big hit indeed, and this is probably the group's most familiar song, but I'm more partial to In Your Room and its spirited, up-tempo sound. Hoff's I'll Set You Free is easily the third best song on the album, while Waiting for You closes out the album in fine style.

Debbi and Vicki Peterson made up half of the band and led the way on five of this album's thirteen tracks. They are perfectly good singers capable of delivering solid vocals, but neither of them seems able to inject their songs with the kind of spirit and emotional depth of Hoffs or Michael Steele. I have always thought Steele's contributions to The Bangles were never given their proper due. While Hoff's voice is bubbly and incredibly sexy, Steele's vocals are oftentimes deep and somber. There's usually no trouble identifying Steele's songs because they stand out noticeably from the rest. Complicated Girl seems to misfire a little bit, but Glitter Years is an excellent track, and Something to Believe In gives us Steele at her best.

If you ask me, the essence of The Bangles is still to be found in Different Light, the group's previous album. Everything (referring to this album) seems to wander a little off-course, displacing The Bangles' initial folk rock tendencies with electric guitar and other studio-engendered trappings. This is still a very good album, but a number of these songs really don't connect with me in a way that makes them memorable. I enjoy listening to them, and there isn't a bad song in the bunch, but Everything seems to be missing a little something, when all is said and done.

An excellent follow-up to Different light
The sound of the Bangles owes a lot to music of an earlier generation, which is probably why I like it. Unlike so many all-female groups, they all played instruments – three of them were guitarists and one was a drummer. They all got a chance to sing lead, though Susannah Hoffs was usually the lead singer on the hits. All of them have good voices, but perhaps the public detected something extra special in Susannah’s voice.

There were three original albums, but it is the second (Different light) and the third (this one) that really matter. Of course, their best songs have been released on several compilations down the years.

This album yielded Eternal flame, their only British number one. An excellent ballad, it has more recently been revived by Atomic kitten, who also had a big UK hit with it. That didn’t do the Bangles any harm at all. Yet another hits compilation was released to capitalise on the situation, reminding everybody whose song it really was.

Nothing else here was anywhere near as successful as Eternal flame, but there are many other fine songs including the lesser hits, I’ll set you free, Be with you and the rousing up-tempo opener to the album, In your room. Despite that opener and the closing Crash and burn, most of the songs here are ballads.

A Fine Album Before The Breakup!
"Everything" saw the Bangles experimenting with Zeppelinesque beats on "Watching The Sky," rocking out on "Glitter Years" and "Crash & Burn," and getting intimate on "I'll Set You Free" and "Make A Play." The hits are here, of course: "In Your Room" (US #5), "Eternal Flame" (US #1), and "Be With You" (US #30). Unlike the previous album, this boasts that celestial harmonies we've come to love about the girls on EVERY track.