Oh, boy. This next series of albums may get a little rough. I like Air Supply's hits, but I don't know how the rest of their material will fare. I guess we'll find out together...Breath...Here we go...
Air Supply is what I candidly call sissy rock. Now, replace the word sissy with a female body part that starts with a "p", and you see what I really call it. This label serves as two purposes in my mind. 1) The music itself is so, well, sissy. All about feelings and emotions, uncool to its roots. 2) I'm sure in singing these songs, these two got a lot of "sissy" from women who all but threw their panties at them. They're the band your sister and mom liked, but that young boys didn't start to notice until the birds and the bees came a-knockin'.
I won't deny Air Supply their overall popularity, and I'll even acknowledge that in their multi-decade career, they've had many a hit. Thirteen Billboard chart toppers, eight of which went to the top ten, is no small feat for any artist. With that said, of their seventeen studio albums between 1976 and 2010, only three have gotten platinum status, and two gold. That's a pretty bad average, all things considered.
Anyway, now that I've given my subjective opinion of the band, today marks the start of my run through their many 80's albums. Because as much as I like to frown upon Air Supply, I clearly contradicted this by opening my wallet, owning all six of their 80's releases, plus Greatest Hits.
The first thing I will say as I went on that journey was how shocking it was to see the prices. On average, albums were costing me fifteen to twenty-five dollars, used. Now, with that, I have to say that the pressings I was after were the first made in Japan. Those do tend to be more costly in comparison to re-issues and remasters, as these were typically made in the early to mid-eighties when CD's were not made in as mass quantities as they were by 1989 (and beyond). However, this didn't make me feel any better about it. This aspect alone is what kept the albums on my want list much longer than initially intended. I definitely had to mentally psych myself up to make these purchases, and then dive in headlong when the moment finally hit me.
As I turned on their 1980 release, and fifth studio album, Lost In Love, I was at least content, for the moment, to be greeted by the title track. I was even happier with track two, All Out Of Love, which if I had to confess, I'd say was a contender as my favorite from the band. This was followed by Every Woman In The World, or what we'll call, the third single from the album.
Unfortunately, this eleven and a half power house of a start left me with an additional twenty-five minutes of uncharted territory. I was both surprised and happy to find two new songs in this fold that piqued my interest, American Hearts, and I Can't Get Excited.
I was also caught off guard as I continued to dig through the rich history of the band, discovering that the version of Lost In Love from the album was actually a remixed second recording. The first, which had an additional two minute runtime was featured on their prior album, 1979's Life Support. It was Arista Records boss, Clive Davis, who would take an interest in the tune, have it remixed, and released in the US in the early 80's. This would also lead to the group signing a deal with the label, who they would stay with through 1987. The album would also become their best seller of all time, being certified 2X platinum.
See, this is what makes these Retro Spins fun. Really learning about the history, finding out where things came from, how they came to be, and so on. While overall, Lost In Love was mediocre at best for me, I really enjoyed the knowledge of Air Supply that came with it.
We'll dig in more to that history next time, when we jump into their 1981 released The One That You Love.
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| THIS WEEK ON THE CHARTS May 26, 1984 |
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