Dreamland Express

Performer: John Denver
Distributor: (Independently by Label)

Notes: "My previous two LPs -- Seasons Of The Heart and It's About Time -- were about relationships breaking down, about falling out of love. Dreamland Express is more optimistic -- it's about falling in love again." So said John Denver upon the release of Dreamland Express, and it's a fair remark except for one thing: the album is not about John Denver falling in love again. Denver contributed only four of the album's 11 songs, and on his numbers, he is still talking about falling out of love. From the title track, which finds him awake at four a.m. again, to "A Wild Heart Looking For Home," in which he is "sleeping without you" and "hoping that someone might phone." It's only on the cover songs that Denver gets to express positive romantic feelings, and even those have a certain nostalgic sense. Whether the songs are actually from the 1950s, such as Roy Orbison's "Claudette," or more recent, such as "I'm In The Mood To Be Desired," they have an early rock & roll style to them. So, it's still more like remembered love than new love. Denver has toned down the world peace themes. Though "Trail Of Tears" has a Native American theme, and his own "African Sunrise" chronicles a trip the singer took for UNICEF, the songs are shunted off to the end of the record. The intention seems to have been to reverse Denver's diminishing record sales by seeking sunnier outside material, but Dreamland Express just comes off as a less-personal effort, and it was not a success. ~ William Ruhlmann

As John Denver, the former John Henry Deutschendorf was a ubiquitous icon of the 1970s. Although he had been a musician and songwriter in the 1960s, penning "Leaving on a Jet Plane" for Peter, Paul & Mary, Denver hit his stride in the '70s with earnest folk songs celebrating the glories of the natural world and life's simple pleasures. Although he was sometimes savaged by critics for his overarching earnestness, his songs speak for themselves, and his records still sell in large numbers. In the wake of his premature death in a 1997 plane crash, a number of contemporary artists have recorded Denver's songs, without any hint of irony.

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