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The perfunctory covers on this collaborative album serve to show just how bad Depp’s own songwriting is, as he rants about how awful it is to be himIt’s perfectly possible to separate the art from the artist. Jimmy Page’s behaviour does not render the Led Zeppelin catalogue unlistenable; cinemas are now showing a film celebrating the life of Elvis, which rather glosses over the fact that Priscilla Beaulieu became his girlfriend when she was 14, but the music still sounds spectacular.Jeff Beck’s collaboration with Johnny Depp, though, is an odd case. Partly because while a British court decided Depp had beaten his now ex-wife, Amber Heard, he then won his case on the same issue in a US court, so people can (and have) taken diametrically opposing stances on his actions. And partly because this record follows so closely on the heels of that second case, with social media still alive with vituperative comment on it, 18 is an uncomfortable listen, frequently giving the sense of Depp taking revenge. Continue reading...