Title: Cheap ploy to reintroduce current pop music into jazz idiom
Product review: As with most of Belden's music, his formula has been to pick up on real artists' innovations, Sting, Prince and rework the music into varying sizes of big band ensembles. True, most of the jazz up through the 50's was based on preexisting songs, that is indisputable. But those songs lived on their own without lyrics, so instrumentalists could play them and make them live. Most of the musical part of pop music today, let's face it, is a life support system for the lyrics. Without them, the music is one-dimensional and uninteresting. Belden has skill, to be sure, but his well-worn formula of parading out current stars' music so that he can try to popularize himself is just another example of me-ism of the 60's and 70's culture.
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