THAT'S ALL

A better known song from Genesis' latter era, 'That's All' is also one of the few songs that is worthy of mention from the band's self-titled work. 'Genesis' (the album) was a major dissapointment, especially from a band that had founded such masterpieces like 'Selling England By The Pound' and 'Foxtrot' not even a decade prior.

'That's All' is a song that is played on the radio all of the time. While it isn't necessarily a great song all around, it is endowed with a cool piano riff that the song works around, making it worth the listen. The b-side here 'Taking It All Too Hard' is definately nothing to talk about, being slow and tame. It is listenable however, if you are open to a bit of 1980's ballad sappiness.

In reality though, beyond a funky piano riff that leads on 'That's All,' there is nothing that is really worth looking into here. Very dissapointing, especially compared to some of the group's earlier material.

"That`s All" is a very good Pop Rock song with funny lyrics which are about (i think) some not so happy love relationships between men and women but which are strong enough to continue despite some "normal" problems of communication. Even Phil Collns (who I think that he wrote the lyrics ) introduced this song on several tours done by Genesis in a very humorous way, even using some vulgar words to describe a love relationship with a difficult woman. He even sang the song with some humour. This song has remained a very popular song in the band`s repertoire, and was played live during several tours (a thing that other songs which were released as singles from their 1983 album could not achieve, because "Illegal Alien" only was played live during their 1983-84 tour, and "Taking It All Too Hard" was never played live by the band).

In the sixties (and less often in the seventies and eighties ) some bands only released some songs as singles, without releasing them on albums. I think that with their album from 1983 being in general very uninspired in content, maybe the band only could have released this song as a single or in an E.P. backed with "It`s Gonna Get Better" and "Taking It All Too Hard" (like they also previously did it with other songs in their "3X3" E.P. from 1982, which by the way had three good songs) and leaving all the other songs recorded in 1983 as unreleased, really.

One of the two releases that differ between what it says here and in YouTube, while the information here says that the B-side is "Taking It All Too Hard", the one i have here has "Second Home By The Sea" instead.

1.- That's All: A pretty good pop track, really fun to play and sing, has some cool solo sections near the end and overall a great simple time. This version is the same as the album version.

2.- Second Home by the Sea: Would've been nice if it started without the sounds of the first section of Home by the Sea, this is exactly as it is on the album version of the digital album on YT, so its not that special. Still, its a weird choice to have this on its own, because this instrumental ends with vocals that just don't make sense on its own without the first section. Its cool that they added this music piece to accompany the pop single though.

With the release listed here and the one i listened to, i don't think this release is very special nowadays, it doesn't add anything to what the album already offers, even the cover looks bad, this is again another 2 star from me, but my next review will feature something interesting that i think everyone should hear because even i had no idea something like that existed, also the reason why i expect more from singles and B-sides.