Some Guys Have All the Luck

Rod Stewart’s rich music heritage

One of the most outstanding rock performers of the second half of the XX century Rod Stewart became famous due to his powerful husky voice and irresistible charm which drove crazy more than one rich and famous beautiful woman. Several generations of classic rock fans know and love his hits. Besides he began as a band member, first with The Jeff Beck Group, then with Faces, which both were among the founders of blues rock and punk rock. Stewart’s music heritage is more than 60 singles that have become hits with almost half of them having got into the top ten charts and quite a number of albums sold in a total sum of more than 250 million copies during almost five decades of his career. During the recent years of the new millennium the singer has refused to record any new material preferring to sing the cover versions of the time-tested songs. Yet this year Warner Brothers releases a collection of Rod Stewart’s own hits Some Guys Have All The Luck consisting of 32 songs tracing his creative path in a chronological order from 1971 to 2004 years.

Some surprises on Some Guys Have All The Luck

The album starts with the songs selected from Stewart’s two successful early albums, 1971’s Every Picture Tells A Story and 1972’s Never A Dull Moment, the first of which is Maggie May, one of the most famous hits that often sounded on the singer’s concerts at the very beginning of his career. Besides these are contagious rhythmic compositions Every Picture Tells A Story and Stay With Me and a ballad with country elements You Wear It Well which by the way he sang when he still performed with Faces. Creations written a little later such as Tonight's The Night (Gonna Be Alright), You're In My Heart (The Final Acclaim), I Was Only Joking and Hot Legs all used to be ultra popular hits in their time. Especially pleasing is the song Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? from 1978’s album Blondes Have More Fun as it is an example of a classic disco hit of the end of 1970s – beginning of 1980s which was more than once remixed during the following years. A vulnerable song Tonight I'm Yours (Don't Hurt Me) contrasts with a frank Infatuation and the title composition also renders the past years’ atmosphere to a great effect. At the end of the record some surprises are waiting. First these are the 1989 versions of songs This Old Heart Of Mine (featuring Ronald Isley) and I Don't Want To Talk About It, second, the unplugged versions of wonderful songs Have I Told You Lately, Hangbags And Gladrags and Reason To Believe featuring Ronnie Wood. Finally the album closer is a previously unreleased composition Two Shades Of Blue built on a famous sample of Borodin’s opera Prince Igor that sounds surprisingly harmonious with Rod Stewart’s vocals.

Songs for all occasions

Naturally Rod Stewart is different from the other performers with his soulful singing of slow ballads and a bold and energetic way to perform vivid and more up-tempo rock tunes. Yet it is his ability to remain a wanted and popular artist without recording his own new material for quite some time which is more interesting. In this context 4 collections of The Great American Songbook series were released from 2002 to 2005 and in 2006 a collection of rock hits called Still The Same…Great Rock Classics of Our Time followed. The album Some Guys Have All The Luck is a great way to remind us that Rod Stewart has really given the world songs for all occasions that sound rather contemporary today, too. Whether this legendary artist ever decides to please us with his new creations or not is not even that important because what there is already in his discography now is sufficient enough to provide us with a song according to our mood or appropriate for a situation any time we need it. No doubt, Rod Stewart deserves some rest and can simply please us with records like Some Guys Have All The Luck from time to time.