Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

Consumer Guide:
  User's Guide
  Grades 1990-
  Grades 1969-89
  And It Don't Stop
Books:
  Book Reports
  Is It Still Good to Ya?
  Going Into the City
  Consumer Guide: 90s
  Grown Up All Wrong
  Consumer Guide: 80s
  Consumer Guide: 70s
  Any Old Way You Choose It
  Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough
Xgau Sez
Writings:
  And It Don't Stop
  CG Columns
  Rock&Roll& [new]
  Rock&Roll& [old]
  Music Essays
  Music Reviews
  Book Reviews
  NAJP Blog
  Playboy
  Blender
  Rolling Stone
  Billboard
  Video Reviews
  Pazz & Jop
  Recyclables
  Newsprint
  Lists
  Miscellany
Bibliography
NPR
Web Site:
  Home
  Site Map
  Contact
  What's New?
    RSS
Carola Dibbell:
  Carola's Website
  Archive
CG Search:
Google Search:
Twitter:

Tracey Ullman

  • You Broke My Heart in 17 Places [MCA, 1984] B+

Consumer Guide Reviews:

You Broke My Heart in 17 Places [MCA, 1984]
Unlike most of her cocharting cofemales, Ullman has undertaken a conscious genre exercise--she plays girl-group tradition for naive if not dumb passivity. The songs new and old are tuneful and right, the production exquisitely not-quite-schlocky, but just-compare her "Bobby's Girl" to Marcie Blaine's original--Ullman sings with too much force and skill to make the conceit convincing. On the other hand, it's probably her musical conscience that saves the project from unmitigated "ironic" condescension. "They Don't Know" did hit at face value, after all. B+