John Pizzarelli
Meets the Beatles (BMG/RCA Victor 61432)

It's a bold stance for John Pizzarelli to bestow this album upon us, according to the liner notes, because he is "wounded by the moronic inferno of today's pop cacophony" and apparently wishes to prove to the masses that pop can be sublime. Come on now, what about Sublime?!

His heart may well be in the right place, but the result of his efforts is a maddening lump of doop from start to finish, from the clueless cover art (a parody of the cover of A Hard Day's Night in which John demonstrates zero range for even making faces—his vocal range is even more limited) to the track selection (all McCartney compositions except for "Here Comes the Sun" and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"). Actually more miserable are the performances themselves, which have about as much imagination as your average Olsen Twins™ album, but far less potential for good ol' fashioned pædophelia.

The principal problem with the record is that it treats the Beatles songbook far too reverently, aiming for approximately the same atmosphere you'll find in the world of Michael Feinstein's hopeless hammy nostalgia, but not even pulling that off with any real panache.

Pizzarelli, son of Bucky, started out as a guitarist, but has steadily veered into primarily vocal-oriented albums, which is confusing given that his voice is as flat and monotonous as Ben Stein's, but minus the distinctive character and any semblance of flair.

The best comparison would be to Billy Joel's wimpiest moments, but if Billy Joel were on powerful antidepressants. (Which he obviously isn't.)

I actually enjoyed Pizzarelli's voice on a previous album (can't remember which one), when it was one track out of an album of instrumentals – over the course of a whole album it's unbelievably grating and annoying. Add in mindless big-band arrangements that manage to use a huge array of instrumentation yet somehow miss any of the interesting harmonic ideas you'll find in the Beatles' original versions, and you're talking BIG-ass trainwreck.

It enrages me that I am even wasting this much time discussing the album, except I am glad that perhaps someone might successfully avoid the album after my tale of woe. Then again, this album probably won't sell more than 250 copies worldwide, so maybe I'd have been better off ignoring it entirely.

But no, the truth must be told – John Pizzarelli Meets the Beatles is an all-time classic of misery. This is not the good sort of bad you sometimes find here and there, but a form of badness so pure it actually hurts.

Worst moment: the cheesy, thinks-its-clever arrangement of "Things We Said Today," which interpolates the melody into the basic arrangement of "Moondance" by Van Morrison. "And I Love Her" suffers from the sort of vocal you'll find mainly at local talent shows and high school musicals … he doesn't appear to be pronouncing the "e" in "her" – it's just "And I love hrrrrr." Yuck! Maybe there was a typo on his sheet music.

"Get Back" may even be worse than "Things We Said Today," set to some sort of go-go beat and featuring some truly bad improvised lyrics. I can't even believe this album got made, much less released. It's so wrong-headed on so many levels I don't know how I'm not crying listening to it. I'd give it the finger but I'm too busy reaching for the fast-forward button.

I can't think of any worse ways to spend 45 minutes. I hope this album ends John Pizzarelli's career.

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Review by Red-Red Richards