Double Fantasy vs Milk and Honey (Lennon tracks only)
 

Milk and Honey

I'm Stepping out

I don't wanna face it

Nobody Told Me

Borrowed Time

(Forgive Me) My little flower princess

Grow old with me


vs Double Fantasy

Starting Over

Cleanup time

I'm losing you

Beautiful boy

Watching the wheels

Woman

Dear Yoko

I think its a tough call. I consider all these songs to be great tracks. Combine them to be a single album and you would have one of the greatest solo Beatles albums. Top 5 definately. I find that the Double Fantasy tracks tend to be a bit more commercial so in terms of preference I lean towards Milk and Honey. By the way am I the only one who thinks that Borrowed Time is under rated? It's a FANTASTIC song.

Double Fantasy was always a bit of a dissappointment for me.I enjoyed the songs but they were all dying for a bit more edge on them - too much production.
Milk and Honey is more raw.I love Borrowed Time too - a great song.I don't wanna face it and Stepping Out too are great but I do prefer the anthology versions.
Grow Old With Me I had played at my wedding so that song is special to me.
Combine the two albums and I agree that you would have a great solo album and possibly Lennons best after Imgine.

John's Double Fantasy songs are classics especially IMHO Watching The Wheels and I much prefer them over his Milk And Honey songs although I like the reggae flavor in Borrowed Time and Flower Princess is a catchy and overlooked gem.

Well, Woman is my favorite Lennon solo song, even though most of you will probably think that's an odd choice. So I'd tend to lead towards Double Fantasy, but I love the Milk & Honey tracks too. I agree with the statement that some of the tracks are better on the Anthology. I also had Grow Old With Me at my wedding, so I'm partial to that one too. :)

I like Double Fantasy a little better but,Mike & Honey is great too."Borrowed Time" is highly under-rated.I love the little noises he makes at the end of the song.If you get the John Lennon box set.The 4th cd is both records without Yoko.Very nice.

I was always a bit... I won't say "disapointed", by "DF"... but let's say that I expected a bit better from John considering that this was his first album (with original material) in six years.

Yes, "Woman" and "Starting over" are very good, "Watching the wheels" and "Beautiful boy" are "pure Lennon" (the songs have something to "say") and "I'm losing you" is quite nice as well (though he'd covered that ground in the past already)

But, considering how John's songs only comprise half of that album... I'm NOT putting down the following songs but, a writter as talented as John... in the six years since "Walls & Bridges"...

... "Dear Yoko" and "Clean up time" were amont the five or six best songs he wrote in all that time ?

I much prefer "M & H", just about all of his songs are more "incisive", more Lennon-like, for me at least...

Mind you, as Matt5 said, combine John's songs from those two albums, and you have one fine record indeed ! *

* Though I do like some of the Yoko songs on these...

As Chris noted earlier in the thread, a cd of only John's tracks from those two albums was included in the out of print Lennon boxset from 1990--cd 4. Another awesome thing about this set is that it includes a remix of "Every Man Has A Woman Who Loves Him" with John's vocals isolated.

Some truly amazing demos from the "house husband" years exist, and I wonder if John would have developed them further for album release if his life had not been robbed from him. An album of songs like "Whatever Happened To...," "Gone From This Place," "India," "She's A Friend of Dorothy's," and "Help Me To Help Myself" would rank among his greatest works, I believe.

One of my favorite songs from M&H has to be "I Don't Want To Face It," if only for the line "you wanna save humanity but it's people that you just can't stand." I think John and Bob Dylan are very similar in how they express this kind of duality...but that's another discussion altogether!

I dearly love just about every John song on both albums, so I couldn't possibly choose. Obviously DF has the more polished sound, while M&H is a little more raw. But I happen to love the way DF sounds, and I love M&H as well. I realize that DF was kind of John going way commercial. In my opinion, I think it was all premeditated and planned that way by him, because he was very fearful of coming back to the music scene with a new record. What if it was a failure? No one liked the songs? etc. So he probably had that primarily in mind when he thought about the production.

If you hear some of the songs toned down, like the WTW, Woman, Dear Yoko demos, or the other Beautiful Boy, you can clearly see how the songs stripped down are still so beautiful. And I appreciate the sort of "commercial" side that John had. He had to be commercial anyway. Look at all those early Beatles songs! No one could ever say he didn't have that side to him. :)

For awhile I never could understand why some people were disappointed with DF. I loved it my very first listen, and I still do. It gets more beautiful as time passes and I see where John was in his life at that time. But I think one of the main reasons is people expected something different from him. Maybe grandiose statements, or some universal messages about where the world was, etc. And then there was that whole POB quality of in-your-face raw angst. DF just seems like some contemporary pop album in comparison.

But now I see how personal the record was, and still is. My boyfriend loves Woman. I think its possibly his all-time favorite John song, and that's quite peculiar for him. There are realy fantastic, beautiful songs on that album, but I'd imagine really die-hard John fans having trouble appreciating the album.

I love them both exactly how they are, and I wouldn't change anything about either of them. (Except maybe "Flower Princess"- I think it's kind of boring.) "Borrowed Time" is indeed highly underrated. I especially love that song.
I'm a die-hard Lennon fan, but I absolutely appreciate DF and MaH. Sure, they were softer, but that's okay.

I actually wish he'd finished "Flower Princess", too. I think that's the only letdown on the Milk And Honey album. "Borrowed Time" is solid; "Nobody Told Me", "I Don't Wanna Face It" and "I'm Stepping Out" are somehow the big rockers that Double Fantasy was needing... "Grow Old With Me" is one of the most beautiful love songs ever written. Wow, it got me thinking... we get a terrific tracklist in here! :smile1:

I would pick Milk And Honey because most of the Lennon tracks in Double Fantasy are just WAY overplayed. I used to love "Woman" and "(Just Like) Starting Over", and in fact I still think they're great songs but I don't listen to them that much. And because of this state of things the songs that I hear the most of this album are actually "Cleanup Time" and "Dear Yoko" (besides some Yoko tracks that I like, "I'm Moving On" is an example). A song like "Watching The Wheels", though, is enough to justify an album and an entire carreer, since it's just so great.

Milk And Honey for the time.