I can’t stand that tepid dreck: “If you want to sing out, sing out! If you want to…”
Gitmo is too good for him.
hh
That’s Cat Stevens? I used to love him. Now I hate him. I hate that song, too. Worst feel good piece of crap ever!
Did Cat Stevens piss in your Cheerios this morning? He’s basically lived a pretty low profile life for the last 30 years.
Well yeah, except for that kill the infidel misunderstanding.
*"On February 21, 1989, Yusuf Islam addressed students at Kingston University in London about his conversion to Islam and was asked about the controversy in the Muslim world and the fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s execution. He replied, “He must be killed. The Qur’an makes it clear - if someone defames the prophet, then he must die.” [5]
Newspapers quickly denounced what was seen as Yusuf Islam’s support for the assassination of Rushdie and the next day Yusuf released a statement saying that he was not personally encouraging anybody to be a vigilante,[1] and that he was only stating that blasphemy is a capital offense according to the Qur’an.
However on March 8, 1989, while speaking in London’s Regents Park Mosque, Yusuf Islam was asked by a Christian Science Monitor reporter how he would “cope with the idea of killing a writer for writing a book.” He is reported to have replied:
In Islam there is a line between let's say freedom and the line which is then transgressed into immorality and irresponsibility and I think as far as this writer is concerned, unfortunately, he has been irresponsible with his freedom of speech. Salman Rushdie or indeed any writer who abuses the prophet, or indeed any prophet, under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death. It's got to be seen as a deterrent, so that other people should not commit the same mistake again."*
Poor Yusuf/Cat has been sadly misunderstood, obviously.
Mrs. J. has collected some of his music but only what she could find secondhand, to avoid his profiting in any way. I never liked any of his stuff so I don’t have to make these tricky decisions.
I don’t care about his conversion to Islam. I just hate that song with a burning passion.
Question: Have you seen Harold and Maude? Because that’s how I was introduced to Cat Stevens, and I can’t help but associate that song with the movie, which is a good thing.
What I didn’t realize until I actually read The Satanic Verses a couple years ago is that Cat Stevens (or a very thinly veiled fictionalized version of him) is actually a character in the book, as is the Ayatollah Khomeini.
It kind of makes me wonder what what actually pissed him off so much - the “defaming” of the prophet, or of himself.
No, I saw it in Charlie Barlett though which I enjoyed, but I hated that song. It was so cheesy…
Bit of a tangent, but HOW IN HELL did the Black Eyed Peas publicist convince the whole mollyfocking world that the Black Eyed Peas “music” is the most important cultural development since the invention of the printing press?!?
It true talent finally meaningless???
Is good PR all that is needed for superstardom?
Same here. The song is only the music from Harold and Maude. Cat Stevens wrote and performed it in 1970 or 1971 for the movie, and long before he embraced Islam. Now it’s a 39-year-old song in a commercial. Big deal.
Love his music. Like him. He certainly is not a terrorist.
He’s not a terrorist.
I’ve always liked that song quite a bit; it’s not one of his very best, but it fills its place perfectly in the “Harold and Maude” soundtrack.
No, in my ears. But, if you want to be him, be him!
Thanks, Spoons, for saving me from having to articulate this spot-on answer.
If anyone has not seen H & M, you owe it to yourself to do so.
And by the way, I like the song.
He may or may not have said Rushdie should die, I don’t know and I don’t care. He has several good songs and I enjoy many of them. Wasn’t there a thread a while back (possibly about Polanski) where the question was raised about being able to enjoy the work of an artist who has done or said something bad? I don’t like Cat Stevens for his religion or purported extremist views…I couldn’t give a shit about that. I just like his songs. “The First Cut is the Deepest” is a great song, as are “I Love my Dog” and “Here Comes my Baby.”
My girlfriend the last couple years of high school was a huge fan. I barely tolerated his pappy music then and my moderate dislike at age 17 has grown into an outright loathing in the couple of decades since. The very sound of the man’s voice sends me flailing for the mute button.
It’s a great song, but Stevens’ version of it is actually pretty awful. Rod Stewart fixed it by removing an out-of-sync line from the chorus and filling out the sound. I like the Sheryl Crow version too, but Rod really saved this song from the scrap-heap.
I say this as a big fan of Cat Stevens overall, and a medium size fan the Mona Bone Jakon album.
So true - and I saw, back in the 80’s, Terence Trent D’Arby do an acapella version that was wonderful.
I totally get how someone like the OP could find a snippet of song nerve-wracking, but I like a lot of Cat’s songs, even though I tend to be un-folky in my guitar music preferences…YMMV
He sucks, the song sucks, his music sucks. Total waste of resources.
Seconded. Bleech, luckily they don’t show those Time-Life compilation album commercials anymore.