Music Review

Good Woman (1991)

EW's GRADE
C-

Details Lead Performance: Gladys Knight; Genre: R&B

Gladys Knight has been a terrific, hard-driving R&B singer for the past quarter-century and she's put over her share of adult love ballads, too. But Good Woman, a disc of interchangeable, anonymous productions contains no ''Love Overboard'' or ''Midnight Train to Georgia'' — and, Lord knows, no ''Nitty Gritty.'' The problems begin with material so thin it barely exists; each ballad is a long series of melodic and verbal cliches, and each up-tempo arrangement is so busy and blustering that it offers little space for Knight to sing. To clinch the disaster, using five producers on only 11 tracks guarantees the album will have no stylistic unity. The lyrics present Knight as a passive antifeminist, fulfilled only by victimization. She might as well have just covered ''Stand By Your Man'' — at least then this record would have had a memorable melody. Bring back the Pips! C-

Originally posted Aug 09, 1991 Published in issue #78 Aug 09, 1991 Order article reprints

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