Will Power is the eighth album by Joe Jackson. Released in 1987, it is his first experiment with classical music, continued in later albums including Night Music, Heaven and Hell, and Symphony No. 1. The album peaked at #131 on the Billboard 200 album chart.

Critical reception

Reviews for Will Power were very mixed. Terry Staunton, writing for New Musical Express, described Will Power as an "accomplished project" which "highlight[s] [the] extremely talented Jackson as a composer and arranger". He questioned the album's commercial potential but added that it would "perhaps lead to a flood of film score commissions". Jane Wilkes of Record Mirror noted Jackson's diversity and said of the album, "You can call it pretentious, call it dramatic, but it's really rather relaxing at the end of the day." In the US, The New York Times called the album "a major step forward by an English composer and performer who has never remained in one place for long." While praising Jackson's compositional skill (including his "flair for lovely melodic passages and unpredictable, often shimmering arrangements" involving "stunning cascades of sound reminiscent of contemporary composer John Adams"), the Los Angeles Times also wrote that "the lengthy, meandering 'Symphony in One Movement' is as colorless and pretentious as the title suggests." Chris Woodstra of AllMusic retrospectively dismissed Will Power as "a good exercise in self-indulgence but little of anything else"; while Trouser Press described the album as "redolent with unrestrained pomposity... (a) trivial self-indulgence", commenting that "while Jackson may be impressed by his ability to convince an orchestra to play his melodramatically panoramic music, it’s unlikely anyone else will find this exercise especially rewarding."

Track listing

All songs written, orchestrated and produced by Joe Jackson.

Personnel

Rhythm section Orchestra

Production

Charts