“Broken Wings” by Mr. Mister

The two adjectives usually applied to the band Mr. Mister by its detractors (at least those that don’t have to do with the stupidity of their name) are ‘boring’ and ‘tuneless’. Now, ‘boring’ is an adjective I distrust in these situaations…it often functions as a code-word for ‘too subtle for me to understand’…but ‘tuneless’, outside of the realm of the avant-garde (which these guys are definitely not), is pretty self-explanatory, and having heard their music, I have to concede it’s pretty accurate. I think this song was going for the effect of the angrier Phil Collins compositions, such as “In the Air Tonight”, but it’s nowhere near interesting or intense enough to pull that off. It’s just a dreary, downbeat Soft Rock ballad with no real melody or tempo to speak of, and the banal lyrics, full of overused love-song cliches, don’t help. Say what you will about the other big Soft Rock acts of the Eighties (lord knows I already have in this section), but at least their songs actually had tunes.

Verdict: Bad.

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