An old raincoat will never let you down, but Rod Stewart will

So I notice Rod Stewart has come out with a new CD. I guess the good news is that he has finally given up on that Great American Songbook quadrilogy. Do you realize he literally did four albums with a full orchestra of songs like It Had To Be You, They Can't Take That Away From Me and Someone To Watch over Me. All these jazz standards made famous by singers with much more pleasant voices than Stewart's senior citizen style warble that he currently employs.

I know my mom is a fan of the orchestration of these albums but I find them unlistenable. When I asked her for Xmas gift ideas last year, she mentioned volume three of this Great American Songbook. Unfortunately, I refused to purchase it on principle. Sorry Mom.

Anyway, the bad news with this new album is that of songs made famous by others during the time of Rod's career. The songs (along with the original artists) are as follows:

1. Have You Ever Seen The Rain (Creedance Clearwater Revival)
2. Fooled Around And Fell In Love (Alvin Bishop-thanks Stewby)
3. I'll Stand By You (The Pretenders)
4. Still The Same (Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band)
5. It's A Heartache (Bonnie Tyler)
6. Day After Day (Badfinger)
7. Missing You (John Waite)
8. Father & Son (Cat Stevens)
9. The Best Of My Love (The Eagles)
10. If Not For You (Bob Dylan)
11. Love Hurts (Nazareth)
12. Everything I Own (Bread)
13. Crazy Love (Van Morrison)

Tell me, you really want to hear Rod doing any of these songs? The silliest has to be him doing a version of It's A Heartache. Bonnie Tyler SOUNDS like Rod Stewart doing that song.

With every new album, I shake my head more and more at the career of Rod Stewart. In the late 60s/early 70s, he was (according to allmusic.com) rock's best interpretive singer. However, he became more concerned with hit singles as opposed to good music and has since become a joke.

My introduction to the greatness of early Rod Stewart was the album Every Picture Tells A Story. Everyone knows this because of the hit Maggie May, but the rest of it is just about as perfect as an album can get. The problem is that every forgets this side of Rod Stewart because of his massive hit songs from the late 70s like Tonight's The Night, Do Ya Think I'm Sexy and You're In My Heart. Any greatest hits album of his features these tracks along with Maggie May but to really like Rod Stewart, you need to look at his first three albums The Rod Stewart Album (also known as An Old Raincoat Will Never Let You Down), Gasoline Alley and the aforementioned Every Picture Tells A Story.

Aside from a desire for success over quality music along with the fact that Stewart stopped working with great musicians such as Jeff Beck and Ron Wood as well as Stewart stopping to write his own material has also added to the demise of his career.

If you want some good Rod Stewart with no filler, I recommend Rod Stewart Gold. It is really cheap and has two discs covering all of the material from his first four CDs including every song off Every Picture Tells A Story. It even has Handbags and Gladrags which is the theme song for the British series The Office.

Top 5 Rod Stewart songs
1. Every Picture Tells A Story
2. It's All Over Now
3. (I Know) I'm Losing You
4. An Old Raincoat Will Never Let You Down
5. Stay With Me (with The Faces)