Review Summary: Santana's Black Album, or simply, his sell-out record
Rock music can take whatever form it desires. Its history has shown that it can survive a fashionable makeover, absorb other genres and emerge with something worth hearing. But beneath whatever packaging you choose, I still expect some integrity. It should be punchy, should wreak a little havoc, should make a statement. I do not necessarily mean loud or nasty guitars, although you know I love those. What I absolutely despise is the practice of trading on rock's reputation to sell consumers an album stripped of everything that might make it inconvenient to market.
By that measure,
Supernatural isn't a rock album, although it was marketed as such. It is pop sprinkled with Latin sensibilities, masquerading as rock, and it reeks of commerciality and plastic machismo. It has all the pretentious swagger of a dance-floor peacock convinced that charming enough women will add a few inches to his manhood. The sensuality is rehearsed, the bravado is artificial, and there's a lot of insecurity behind such motivations. Worst of all, the album plays it as safely as possible in order to squeeze out every last dollar out of your pockets.
Clive Davis's strategy certainly paid off. Released on Arista in 1999,
Supernatural restored Santana to mainstream prominence and eventually earned fifteen-times-platinum certification in the United States. Released at the dawn of the Napster era,
Supernatural went on to sell over thirty million copies worldwide. And I can't help but wonder just how much further those numbers might have climbed without the rise of online piracy. I wouldn't be surprised if it had gone on to become the biggest-selling rock album of all time. Gathering Dave Matthews, Rob Thomas, Everlast, Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean and Maná around a veteran guitarist opened several markets at once. Multiple singers, languages and styles became commercial advantages on an album designed to accommodate them all. And, obviously, having a guitar-rock icon like Eric Clapton on board helps boost sales and maximise profits. If Santana's name does not open your wallet, perhaps Clapton's will.
Santana himself is obviously a top-tier guitarist, even when playing on absolute autopilot by his own standards. Ask him for a solo, a riff or a lick in Latin music, rock, soul, blues or jazz, and he can deliver almost anything required of him. That versatility ought to give these collaborations some musical substance. Instead, too many songs sound written for him to decorate, with the guest performers determining the surroundings and Carlos adding his usual colourful flourishes. Several compositions carry his co-writing credit, but his influence on their character is strangely limited. At times, he might as well be the session player hired to make somebody else's record sound expensive.
His guitar playing remains tasteful, but honestly, it isn't anything you haven't heard countless times before, in better and less conventional settings. The blues phrasing and jazzy touches colour the pop, Contemporary R&B and hip-hop arrangements without seriously disturbing them. Such fluency becomes a liability when the phrases arrive with this degree of predictability. Listen to
Smooth and then
Corazón Espinado: the resemblance between some of those licks makes the recycling difficult to overlook. The same dependable vocabulary is being asked to pass for another fresh encounter. He can also prolong a solo well after the song has exhausted its modest ideas. None of this suggests a shortage of talent. It suggests a guitarist being asked to do far too little with it.
The vocals are... pretty much what you'd expect: bland, generic, and carefully tailored to fit the demands of mainstream pop. The singers have recognisable personalities, but the record makes remarkably little of the possibilities. Rob Thomas's delivery gives Smooth its immediate effectiveness, and the exchanges with Everlast on
Put Your Lights On create a more convincing connection between voice and guitar. Beyond such functional pairings, the changing cast rarely amount to much beyond the sum of their parts. The pop-soul setting of Lauryn Hill and CeeLo Green's contribution and the Dust Brothers-produced appearance by Eagle-Eye Cherry belong to their respective guests' worlds. Rather than bringing these different voices together under a shared artistic vision, Supernatural often sounds like a collection of unrelated projects assembled beneath the Santana name. In the end, it's his unmistakable guitar tone that does most of the work holding everything together.
All that supposed passion leaves me thinking of the soulless glamour sold through plastic breasts and inflated biceps, with more juice than blood behind the advertised power. Everything is exaggerated for display. The object of the exercise is to look desirable, powerful and alive, however manufactured the result may be. It is the same hyper-consumerist fantasy that plagues so much of contemporary life, and this album practically comes shrink-wrapped in it.
It wouldn’t be much of a success if the album didn’t feature some genuine highlights. There are decent songs here and there, and yes, this collection contains the mega hit
Smooth.
Migra and
(Da Le) Yaleo retain some rhythmic vitality, while the wistful instrumental
El Farol is probably my favourite. Those moments do little to alter the album's overriding character, however, and the quality of the playing cannot disguise how cautiously the music has been conceived.
Supernatural's success had consequences beyond Santana's own career. Latin and African American rhythms, together with smooth lead guitar, became so closely associated with his name that other players could slip from view; Clapton had already achieved a remarkably similar tone with Cream three decades earlier. Yet a Peter Green or a Gary Moore recording with a Latin flavour still prompts certain responses from relatives and friends alike: ‘Is that Santana? I didn't know you were a fan!' I can smile at the confusion, but it illustrates how easily a commercially dominant image becomes a substitute for a much wider musical history. Supernatural may have put Santana back on the musical and business map, certainly, but it didn’t renew his music.
Beyond that, what else can we really say about this album’s legacy? Its ubiquity is unquestionable, but that only makes me less forgiving of a record that turned this domesticated version of Santana's playing into the definitive image of his artistry for an entire generation. Commercial rehabilitation, however, is not the same as artistic renewal, no matter how many records it sells or how many awards it collects. And I find it difficult to forgive a guitarist who once possessed such a singular artistic vision for abandoning so much of what made him exceptional in favour of the easiest, most commercially rewarding path.
Recommended tracks:
(Da Le) Yaleo
Africa Bamba
Smooth
Maria Maria
Migra
El Farol
