Review Summary: But is he really saying anything?
It takes a certain amount of temerity to, after receiving national exposure and a record deal as runner-up on a televised singing contest, release a track entitled “
What About Me?” as your debut, but Shannon “Nollsy” Noll did it with a straight face. Let’s be clear about this — in a time and place where after-work entertainment was limited to four and a half free-to-air TV channels, talk-back radio, and whatever dust-ups you could get into down at the pub, Shannon Noll, the second-most recognisable face on the ninth-ever most viewed TV show in the country up until that point, decided to cry poor.
One can hardly blame Nollsy for the move though. After all, it’s more than clear that if his handlers didn’t see dollar signs the minute he walked into the room, they at least tasted copper pennies — and then had him dance for them. Comparing Nollsy and his eternal rival, Guy Sebastian, it’s not hard to see what bets the show’s producers hedged either: Sebastian, a clean-cut, racially ambiguous R&B-influenced vocalist marketed to appeal to affluent yuppies rapidly turning to the ill-defined melange of condescendingly-labelled “urban” (eugh) music as their soundtrack to bar crawls and club nights; Nollsy his square-jawed farmer’s boy antithesis, charming suburban fringes and regional centres feeling increasingly alienated by white-collar rhetoric about multiculturalism and the “Asian Century” with sterile, not-quite-rockin’ odes to self pity and big trucks.
It was all the diversity Australia could muster in 2003.
To this end, Noll’s artistic persona was very deliberately assembled from bits and bobs of already-road-tested, true-blue, dinky-di, dyed-in-the-wool Australian music industry icons. The ruggedly handsome Nollsy projected Cold Chisel frontman Jimmy Barnes’ working class toughness without the troublesome left-wing politics or class consciousness; his ostentatious Southern Cross chest tattoo exuded country singer John Williamson’s bucolic twang and flag-waving patriotism without Williamson’s seedy leer or unfortunate hairline.
This is all necessary context, because Noll’s debut album,
That’s What I’m Talking About!, went five times Platinum in Australia — an achievement built solely off the back of the most relentless marketing machine the Australian music industry had seen up to that point, as opposed to any musical or artistic triumph. Aside from the aforementioned “
What About Me?”, itself a cover of a minor ‘80s country radio hit transparently released as lead single on Australia Day,
That’s What I’m Talking About! features “
Drive”, a Bryan Adams-penned quagmire of power chords in which Noll implores the listener to “go for a ride” on his “big, black, shiny…car” like some sort of bizarre Lenny Kravitz parody, and “
Learn to Fly”, a tepid ballad determined to bask in the shadow of Chisel’s “
When the War is Over”. Vocally, Noll comes off as a wheezier Ronan Keating doing his best pitch-corrected Keith Urban impression. The few attempts at wholesale highway robbery of Barnesy’s trademark howl in tracks like “
Drive” fall so short of the mark that not even solicitors acting for the estate of Marvin Gaye would be willing to prosecute a copyright infringement.
The rest of
That’s What I’m Talking About! is a mire of lackadaisical acoustic jangle, handclaps on two and four, token slide guitar fills, and overdriven telecasters that seem almost bashful about ever breaking up enough to truly give the impression they’d be okay with rocking out. The programmed drums and few instances of electronic percussion on an album attempting to trade on its pastoral authenticity are head-scratching; the MIDI strings on all tracks but penultimate ballad “
The Way She Loved Me” are just plain pinchbeck. Nollsy’s one writing credit, however — closer “
The Way I Feel”, a collaboration with his brother — ends the album on a surprising note, with Noll suddenly finding a semblance of confidence and character while crooning over jaunty major blues licks.
Released in February 2004,
That’s What I’m Talking About! was given more time to marinate than Guy Sebastian’s rushed Christmastime debut offering
Just As I Am. Consequently, it has a sense of identity and cohesion that elevates it over Sebastian’s sorry, confused mess of a debut, even through the limp instrumentals, stodgy lyricism and derivative execution. In every other respect, however,
That’s What I’m Talking About! is entirely unremarkable except as a masterclass in salesmanship from an artist who was hocked like a used car. By trading off tired tropes and hackneyed stereotypes,
That’s What I’m Talking About! built enough hype to fly off the shelves — only to be end up never to be spoken about in anything but snickers and whispers again; the eternal punchline of a joke Shannon Noll still arguably mightn’t realise he’s told.
