cheesedip1 wrote:----Open Your Eyes is one of the best songs Alter Bridge has ever done.
----Blackbird is also one of their best songs. However, if you ranked all parts of that song, the chorus would come in last. Everything else in that song is better than the chorus. The pre chorus riff, the verse, the outro, etc.
----Blackbird is not their best album. Too many weaker choruses on that album.....cough.......wayward one, white knuckles, one by one, break me down, coming home, buried alive....etc
-----Also more people could get into the albums of alter bridge probably if the mixing was better.
------Theyre still a great band, regardless of my minor criticisms.
This stuck with me for a second, and as much as I personally enjoy the chorus, I started telling myself one reason I liked it is simply because the power behind Myles' vocal... but then it got me to realize within that there are very few AB choruses since Blackbird (the album) where Myles is mostly flying solo in singing the chorus. Now you either have Mark harmonizing, Myles harmonizing with himself, or both.
Since Blackbird, these are the
only songs where you truly feel Myles dominating the vocal soundstage in the choruses or isn't being harmonized with at all (I'm not considering Breathe, Solace, or Cruel Son on this list):
Make It Right
The Uninvited
All Ends Well
The Other Side
Crows On A Wire
Twilight
Pay No Mind
There is definitely harmonization in the chorus for All Ends Well, but it's not very heavy. Make It Right has some filtering going on, but it mostly just sounds like one Myles only.
Anyway, I did the math... we're looking at about 12% of their songs since BB to have Myles buried in vocal layers. It
can add to a chorus, but I go back to some of these choruses and wonder if that's a contributing factor to why I could like those songs so much (note that I don't really like Make It Right or Twilight, but the little that I do like may come from this).
When I go back to Blackbird, I'm thinking about what it would sound like if it was arranged today. How much would Myles be buried, what other bad loudness war mixing would they include, etc.? It's shameful to think about, and it only makes me love the power of that song's chorus that much more.
Every song ever made has a relative weak point, and although one would want the chorus to be the ever-pleasing crescendo of the track, Blackbird is definitely not a song with a weak one (even if it does relatively). I happen to think the chorus is fantastic, but that's one man's opinion. Would I feel the same if he was harmonized? Maybe not, I'm not sure. I'm also not willing to find out.
I'm legitimately glad they got that song out of the way before they changed their sound one album later.