"Family Ties" Revisited

I’d like to revise some of my comments about the Wilburn & Wilburn CD Family Ties.

First off, I’d like to say that everything in this post is completely true.  I’ve always hated it when politicians would say something controversial, and then make a public apology for it when they got a lot of criticism.  So I don’t want my comments here to resemble something like that.  I did go back and relisten to the CD due to the large amount of negative comments I received on the post, however I am not lying when I say that I have changed my opinion on most of the songs.  With that being said, let us continue.

First of all, I left all the “constructive” part of out of my criticisms which was a big mistake.  I wasn’t taking into consideration that I was writing a review about a CD that was made by actual people, and that those people could someday read the post.  That should be a rule of thumb for me right there.  Don’t write something that you wouldn’t want the creator (or in this case, the musical artist) to read.  However, it’s too late for that.  I’m not going to remove my post, as one reader suggested I do.  But I would like to make an apology for being so…critical and mean-spirited.  Obviously there is a place for criticisms in a review, but I didn’t find the right balance in this one.

I believe there were a couple of reasons the review was so critical.  For one, I only listened to the CD once.  It didn’t fit into my preferred musical styles, so I immediately wrote bad things about it.  But as I’ve said before, sometimes it takes me a couple of listens before I start to really like a project.  Secondly, I was probably wanting the CD to be something that it simply wasn’t.  I’m a big fan of quartet music, and the mainline Southern Gospel sound.  But Wilburn & Wilburn isn’t a quartet.  And they had a different style than other groups.  I see now that there’s nothing wrong with that.  I just had to adjust my thinking a little.

I do hold the same opinion as before on a couple of the songs on Family Ties.  I still do not like “I Ain’t Giving Up On Jesus” or “Let’s All Go Down to the River.”  BUT, after listening to the rest of the CD a couple of times, I have come to enjoy most of the songs that I ranted about:

• It’s a Shore Thing - 4-4.5 stars
• Jesus Will - 4 stars
• Devil Be Gone - 3 stars
• Mama - 3.5 stars
• You’ll Still Be There - 2.5 stars
• A Cross Became My Saving Grace - 3 stars
• I John - 3.5 stars
• Things I’ve Never Done - 4 stars
• Family Ties - 5 stars 

Like I said earlier, I’m not just saying all this.  I really have come to enjoy the CD a lot more than I did when I first listened to it.  If I were to write the review again, I’d probably give Family Ties a 3.5-4 star rating, instead of just two.

So, do with this article what you want.  But I wanted to make it clear to my readers that I don’t think it’s terrible like I made it out to be.