Jubilee wrote:kgdjpubs wrote:I always thought ROR was the continuation of Perry's attempts on Street Talk to make a Motown record. Mix Motown with Journey, and you basically end up with ROR, the album. If Be Good to Yourself was the pure Journey sound.........Happy to Give was pure R&B/soul with little concession to "Journey", starting with the intentional Sam Cooke ripoff of the opening lines.
Probably better off released as Perry solo, and the extended guitar solo from when Journey played it live a few years ago improved it a bit, but the song stands on its own if you can take Journey out of the equation.
Love, love, love this song. And yeah, that opening line is dangerously close to the opening line of "A Change is Gonna Come".It's just a very simple, stripped-down, honest, effort. No bells & whistles. Probably should have been a Perry solo record, since there really isn't much room there for anyone else. I think this song certainly does fall into the "Soul" category. I don't know about Motown, necessarily (maybe more "Philly-Soul"), but I could definitely see another artist recording this very same song with little alteration, and releasing it as a Soul/R&B cut.
I think the opening is WAY too close to be anything other than an intentional tip-of-the-hand to Cooke's song. Not the first time Perry did that (see LTS) and he covered Cupid live at one point.
Motown was more about the album in general (I'll Be Alright Without You is VERY close, and probably would pass with a slightly different arrangement). Happy to Give certainly isn't Motown though, of course. It's R&B/soul, but the production/arrangement is a bit too 80s pop.
Lose the 80s pop production, and do a little bit of rearrangement, mix about 1/2 of ROR and a bit of Street Talk, and you have the Perry soul album.
