HEARTBEAT

I did not like the "Beat" album from King Crimson. In fact, I never was interested in listening again to this band after I bought that album. Some years later I watched on TV the video clip of a song (I even can`t remember the name of the song!) from their next album ("Three of a Perfect Pair") and I was finally convinced that this band with Adrian Belew did not sound as good as the very good old King Crimson from 1969-74. Adrian Belew`s King Crimson was a very different band, sounding more experimental and noisy, but not interesting for my taste.

Of all the songs from "Beat" I only liked two of them. One was "Heartbeat", a love song. More close to Pop Rock than to Prog Rock, with good lead vocals by Belew, and with "Two Hands" (the other song that I liked from that album) both are the most accessible songs from that album. Even if both songs were good, both songs did not sound for me as King Crimson`s songs, at least related to the old King Crimson. sound.

The "B" side, "Requiem", is maybe the song which I liked the less from that album. Noisy and "experimental" but not good for my taste.

King Crimson's new wave song. Although the "color trilogy" by King Crimson is new wave, that is, Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair, Heartbeat has to be the most new wave song out of all those albums. I like new wave music, Talking Heads, Devo, Blondie, Pretenders, they're all my jam, but King Crimson playing new wave? Well they proved they could do it on this single.

The song isn't much to look at, at least when compared to other King Crimson songs. It is a short, standard structure pop song, but it's nice because it helps to balance out the other weirder material that's present in Three of a Perfect Pair and Discipline.

Three stars because Beat was a three star album, and also because it isn't really an essential song by the band. That would be anything off of Red.

Dissenting views are a good thing, so here it is. I did like the BEAT album. Yes, it's almost Crossover Prog, heretical I know, but I don't think that's the worst thing. When I was young in the 70's, practically all the worthwhile rock music was prog influenced. I've never been able to sit through all of Lizard, for instance - too much like post -TRESPASS Genesis. Give me BEAT anyday. This has an edited version of "Requiem", but the original barely has any structure to begin with. I'm not ashamed to say I love "Heartbeat". If this is meant to expose more people to KC, the usual reason for singles, I think this one succeeds.