Ripcord
Keith Urban
Capitol Nashville
Three stars
Having finished his run as an American Idol judge, Keith Urban leaps into Ripcord, the most eclectic, genre-spanning album of his career. With 10 producers involved, Ripcord is a hodgepodge of musical directions.
Singing with renewed vigour and range, the New Zealand-born country singer sounds best when leaning on old-school R&B. He brings a soulful touch to Break on Me and his duet with Carrie Underwood on The Fighter sounds like a modern update of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. The organ and single-note guitar on Blue Ain't Your Color follows Chris Stapleton into a contemporary style of country blues.
Elsewhere, Urban strains to fit into a hip sound. The hit Gettin' in the Way is a clever song about desire, but the generic group choruses dampen the joy.
He stands his ground with Pitbull on the hip-hop lite of Sun Don't Let Me Down, but it sounds more like an exercise than a celebration. An experimental approach is commendable for a veteran artist. Despite the uneven results, Ripcord pays off more often than not.
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Brief scores:
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South Africa (1st innings) 123-2: Markram 78; Masood 1-4
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
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With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
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Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
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