Bobby Womack - Please Forgive My Heart
Song
"Please Forgive My Heart" is a single from American soul artist Bobby Womack for his album The Bravest Man in the Universe. Released on June 8, 2012, it was his first studio album since 2000 and his first album of original material since 1994's Resurrection. It was produced by Damon Albarn and Richard Russell and released on the UK-based XL Recordings label.
Recording took place between October 3 and December 2, 2011 in London and New York City studios, followed by a brief recording session in London on March 7, 2012. In the period between December and March recordings, Womack was admitted to hospital with pneumonia.
In the period between the last recording session and the album's release he was diagnosed with colon cancer and successfully treated through surgery. The first song released from the album, "Please Forgive My Heart", was offered as a free download on XL Recordings's official website on March 8, 2012.
Critical reception
Stephen M. Deusner of Pitchfork said:
"Already an industry veteran by the time he broke out as a solo artist in the 1970s, Bobby Womack had a music personality to match his vocal chops. He inhabits his songs with a gruffness that cuts through even the most florid arrangements to communicate romantic agony or social outrage.
Like so many of his contemporaries, he struggled in subsequent decades to match those early hits, eventually reappearing in 2010 on Gorillaz' Plastic Beach. On this first glimpse of his first album in nearly 20 years, The Bravest Man in the Universe, co-producers Damon Albarn and Richard Russell don't try to re-create the musical flourishes of his old material.
Instead, they opt for a burbling piano and synth syncopation that sounds like futuristic R&B. The pair's sonic touches are hypnotic enough to sound unobtrusive, providing an intriguing contrast with Womack's coarsely textured voice, but also allowing him to sound as direct as ever.
"Please Forgive My Heart" conveys regret as an existential state of being, which sounds all the more powerful for coming so late in a bold career: "Time is not commuted," he sings. "It lingers, lingers without a sound."
Album
The Bravest Man in the Universe is the twenty-seventh and final studio album by the American soul artist Bobby Womack.
Released on June 8, 2012, it was his first studio album since 2000 and his first album of original material since 1994's Resurrection. It was produced by Damon Albarn and Richard Russell and released on the UK-based XL Recordings label. The Bravest Man in the Universe is the final album to be released in Womack's lifetime, as The Best Is Yet to Come will be released posthumously.
Recording took place between October 3 and December 2, 2011 in London and New York studios, followed by a brief recording session in London on March 7, 2012. In the period between December and March recordings, Womack was admitted to hospital with pneumonia.
In the period between the last recording session and the album's release he was diagnosed with colon cancer and successfully treated through surgery. The first song released from the album, "Please Forgive My Heart", was offered as a free download on XL Recordings's official website on March 8, 2012.
Background
The Bravest Man in the Universe is Womack's first studio album since 2000's Christmas Album and his first album of original material since 1994's Resurrection.
"I'd just come off a heavy drugs scene and I'd been out 20 years", claimed Womack. "I stopped wanting to be a part of music when the Monkees retired."
Womack explained that he had lost much of his desire and confidence to create music. Womack's daughter, GinaRe revealed that
"there was a point in my dad's life when he didn't even want to write and make music. When I was younger he would, like, drink his tequila and play his guitar and think of new songs 24 hours a day, and then there came a point when he quit everything... He'd just watch TV and be in bed by 10pm every night; he had no passion for the music anymore."
Gorillaz
In 2009, Albarn contacted Womack during the recording sessions for the Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach. Albarn wanted to work with Womack due to him loving Womack's voice, comparing it to the voices of Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye. GinaRe convinced him to collaborate with Gorillaz, stating that it would be a good way to return to music. Womack ended up singing on the tracks "Stylo" and "Cloud of Unknowing" and participated in their world tour.
Womack became inspired to start writing music again, stating that
"one day I was riding on the bus and I told my assistant to tell the driver to pull over and get my guitar and bring a pad and I wrote about 20 songs. My thoughts were running crazy. I was like, 'Thank God, that's the feeling I wanted back.'"
Albarn approached Richard Russell about working on Womack's new album. The pair had recently worked together on Kinshasa One Two as part of DRC Music and Albarn had also contributed to Gil Scott-Heron's I'm New Here, which Russell had produced. "I had a gut feeling about the project", claimed Russell. "Firstly because Bobby's spirit is so strong. It's present in that incredible voice of his. I also know Damon is a do-er, he gets things done."
Recording
Working in the studio was a total joy. It was a small team, with Bobby on guitar, Damon on keyboard and other instruments, myself on Drums and Samples and Harold Payne, who has worked with Bobby since the 1970s. It was open and free, with no egos involved... everyone was surprised how easy it was, really.Richard Russell
"This album was put together like we had worked on it for years", claimed Womack. "But we had only worked on it from the time we went in the studio. We just went in and said, 'Let's do a song.' And the songs kept on coming. We'd go in the studio each morning at 11am, and at 6pm every night, everyone wanted to go home and be with their family. Damon was very strict about that, and I respected that, because that was how I wanted to be, and I was persuaded in the past that you gotta hang out all night..."
Richard Russell claimed that "working in the studio was a total joy" and described the atmosphere in the studio as "open and free, with no egos involved... everyone was surprised how easy it was, really." Damon Albarn revealed that on many occasions, he would give instrumental demos to Womack who would take them away outside studio hours and use them as a basis for writing lyrics.
Experimentation
Womack said that Albarn encouraged him to push the boundaries with experimentation, with Albarn claiming that "the structure and approach [to recording] was unorthodox for Womack." On March 15, 2013 iTunes re-released the album under the moniker "The Expanded Edition" which features three new songs, "It's Been a Long Night", "Hold the River Down" and "Central Avenue", all of which were produced by Richard Russell and Damon Albarn.
The title track actually dates back to Womack's early career in the 1960s and 1970s. He told Uncut magazine: "I wrote that over 40 years ago. Damon and Richard were shocked when I told them, but it's a case of 'same attitude, different times.' When you tell the truth you never go out of style."
Music
Retox Magazine's reviewer Jack Flahavan described the album's sound as "a cocktail of the old school and the new, a meeting between tradition and futurism, poetically entwined to create a soundscape in a sphere of its own." Simon Harper of Clash magazine, described "Please Forgive My Heart" as containing "paralyzing pain" as Womack "pleads over sparse piano and penetrating, warm beats".
Artwork
The album cover, photographed by Jamie-James Medina, features Womack's hand with his thumb twisted backward, a capability of some double-jointed individuals. At Consequence of Sound, the reviewer Jon Hadusek writes, "What’s wrong with his thumb? On the cover—why is [it] like that? Is it broken? ... things are grey. Never has artwork so aptly prefaced the album it accompanies."
Artist
Robert Dwayne "Bobby" Womack (Cleveland, 4 marzo 1944 – Tarzana, 27 giugno 2014) è stato un cantautore e chitarrista statunitense. Ha conseguito i suoi maggiori successi negli anni settanta e ottanta eccellendo nel genere soul e R&B.
