Carlos Santana, famous for his emotional guitar playing that incorporates a unique blend of blues, latin, and rock styles, has just released his twenty-eighth studio album on the 21st of September. Instead of releasing new material, however, Santana’s new album consists solely of covers of classic rock hits.
The album, “
Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics Of All Time”, showcases Santana’s abilities as a musician and the great guitar playing skills that have made him an icon in the rock world. He adds a unique twist to each of the classics he covers by mixing the originals with his own style, and the result has proven to be highly successful… From a sales perspective, at least.
Within the first week of its release the record had already amassed over 60,000 sales and reached number five on the Billboard 200 chart, which is a great accomplishment for any musician. The artists who placed ahead of Santana were Zac Brown, Maroon 5, Linkin Park and Selena Gomez.
Despite the high sales numbers, the album received mixed reviews. Fans seem to be caught between loving and hating the record, some claiming the covers aren’t faithful enough to the originals while others enjoy hearing the same old songs done differently.
Either way you look at it Santana’s influence and contributions to the rock world can’t be denied, and hopefully we’ll continue to see new releases in the future.
That's how they roll. You take a proven artist, pair him up with young, up & coming artists from as wide a spectrum as you can get (to pull the crossover crowd), feed them a handfull of songs that have proven themselves to be hits, release the whole shebang under the guise of new, "never-before-heard-of" versions of Santana's favorites. No risk at all for the record company. These songs and artists all draw their own fans, and the stuffed suits make the money.
Here's a thought: all that talent in one room with an old veteran like Santana. What kind of new music might they have written?