ROD STEWART: VICTIM OF MARKET RESEARCH?

Rod Stewart has done very little cool music in the past 30 years. That said, you can't really knock his early career: his stuff with The Jeff Beck Group, The Faces, and his first eight albums were all pretty great.

Still there are fewer artists with a wider margin of space between thier cool stuff and thier uncool stuff. Just my opinion but who else is as disappointing?

On the other hand, he always seems to be enjoying the ride he's on, so who am I to complain about it? I wasn't really feeling his Great American Songbook series of albums, although I thought there was some good stuff on his recent album of '70s mellow rock covers, Still The Same. And he's made his label - J Records - millions of dollars in just a few years, when few of his peers (or anyone else) was putting out multi-platinum albums once a year.

So, I'm reading this little feature on him in the new Rolling Stone, and he mentions that his next album will be the fifth (and final) Great American Songbook album, and he also wants to do an album of old R&B classics and then a country album. But the label doesn't want him doing a country album. He said, "Apparently, the idea didn't 'test' well, whatever the fuck that means." I'd love to be a fly on the wall when some marketing and research guy explains to Rod Stewart what kind of albums he should be making. And would it really be a stretch for the guy who sang "Maggie May," "The First Cut Is The Deepest" and "Handbags and Gladrags" to do a country album?