This reverend ain’t your average reverend.
I might know, seeing as my dad is a reverend, and I can assure you, although his musical renderings are more than adequate, they do not compare to the soulful lyricism of Al Green.
If you’re just tuning into an Al Green album for the first time, you, good sir or lady, are in for a fine treat. Al Green’s style is the holy trinity of music: a perfect blend of soul, blues and a dash of gospel.
What is soul, you ask? Pick up an Al Green album to find out. Right now. Soul doesn’t do things halfway: when it’s sad, it’s sad, but when it’s happy, it’s happy —- hence Al Green’s song “Love and Happiness” versus “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” There’s really no guessing to the emotions of these songs. He really lays it all down for you … if you catch my drift.
Just because he sets the emotions of the songs pretty straightforwardly, that doesn’t decrease the quality of his execution in portraying these emotions. The range of his voice varies just about as much as one’s emotional journey when listening to Green’s discography.
“Even today, nobody has range like him,” ?uestlove says on Green’s WME Entertainment talent profile.
I would take it one step farther to argue that especially today, nobody has range like Green. With people running around singing crazy songs such as “Call Me Maybe,” which maybe has six different tones throughout the whole song (if we’re being generous), it’s refreshing to pop in a song with a little more diversity in tone (and original lyrics, and more funk … I could go on and on and on).
Soul is an underrated genre among most contemporary teens. However, everyone can really relate to all of the songs that Green sings. In fact, it might show something a little about his character compared to singers of today since he sings “Let’s Stay Together,” a drastic contrast in not only content but also style to the popular song “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” Even just the titles contrast the stick-with-it, can-do-it attitude of the son of a sharecropper compared to the instant gratification attitude of a young pop star of today.
If you are headed to the festival and you only have a few minutes to sample a little bit of Al Green before you head out to chow down and get your blues on, I suggest listening to “Let’s Stay Together,” “Let Me Help You” or “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart.”
Al Green performs at 9:30 p.m. Saturday on the Mpix stage at Seventh and Locust streets, where he will “love you for free” … if you have a ticket that is.