HAHAHA! And my girl Merkle twisted 'em till the fool screamed! Stock up on milk and stay well! And understand that about 60% of Americans [[far too few, but still ...) understand that djt is a pos and do not support any of his ... policies.
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H That's the point I was making those 2 songs should not count. But you and Marv were the ones saying Gladys had a huge #1 while forgetting Diana had the same kind of #1 in the same year. And the thread was about the Album Eaten Alive and how Marv said it was trash and that everybody else was having huge hits. I assumed he was talking about their albums that was released in 1985.
In my enthusiasm of trying to prove someone wrong, I wound up being wrong too.
But, screw it! There was so much good music in the 80s that there was no way I could concentrate on just one, and that one faded pretty quickly after the "Swept Away" album. I don't like Patti Labelle, and wasn't much of a fan of Gladys Knight & The Pips or Dionne Warwick in the 80s.
While I was licking my chops at the opportunity to break this post down point for point, ultimately your last paragraph appealed to the part of me that prefers to find a resolution to a conflict [[that's not as "final" as using the ignore feature) rather than keep it going. So take this as my word that the problem between us is officially dead. If I bring it up again, feel free to reference this post and throw it up in my face as evidence of my hypocrisy. We will move forward as if it never happened...
I don't know, things get pretty weird around here sometimes. But it is a shame that the thread devolved the way it did. But if people would just take my advice when it comes to Mr. Nobody-Thinks-About-Diane-But-I-Post-About-Diane-All-The-Time, this thread would've never gone so far left. I mean at some point y'all gotta know he was[[is) throwing stuff out there just to see who will take a bite. Come on, I'm not the only one who notices this...am I??:confused:
That was one of the points I was making. There was a ton of great music out and after a certain point even the nice stuff Diana might do got lost in the shuffle because there were better options. I can play Who's Zoomin Who all the way through. I could toss a copy of Eaten Alive in the trash and not lose a lick of sleep. Diana Ross was so much better than the material she started releasing.
What I want to know is who had control at RCA? Was exclusive creative control a part of Diana's contract? If not, who was f'n up the job by not grabbing this woman by the shoulders and telling her to move over, she's going to get help with the next project? There is no way Diana Ross is signed to my label and releasing duds, even if I only paid her 1000 dollars in advance. She was not equipped to take over her career and at some point RCA knew that. Why didn't they do anything?
Can people just stop going after individual people here???? Geeez
With her contract at RCA, she formed Ross Records. Ross had full creative control, and a distribution deal. There wasn't much RCA could contractually do to set her straight. It was all her ego at work. Of course she wanted to do well, but she couldn't get out of her own way.
When she went back to Motown, she brought her Ross Records with her. Remember that horrible boxed set "Forever Diana" with the terrible packaging and horrible sound? That was all her doing. She didn't pick experienced producers, tape archivists or engineers, which is what you do for boxed sets. She could have picked Dennis Drake, Bill Inglot, Harry Weinger, Joseph M. Palmaccio, ...any of the top people of the day, but she didn't. As a result, that boxed set is a disaster. Tape misalignments, dropouts, bad EQ, questionable tape sources...I was pissed when I bought it and sold it within days.
I am never going to stop telling the truth so you can go to bed now! Stop trying to qualify your BS! It was not a solo recording, nor did she help write it. That is why she still has to pay Lionel Richie a performance fee to this very day everytime she warbles it in her pitiful "concerts" now.
Luke is right. can we all stop the personal attacks? This thread was calming down until this.
I don't think it was Lionel Richie's idea to do that duet. I think he was kind of forced into it. From what I understand, it was originally written as a solo.
Ross did do the song as a solo on her "Why Do Fools Fall In Love" album.
Since Lionel Richie wrote it, he gets paid every time it is recorded, performed, or played on the air. No one needs to get permission to do it, but they have to pay up.
Marv, I can now see where your use of "warbling" and "pitiful" can be construed as baiting. It is your be opinion, so you have the right to say it.
I will also try to do better to not bash the Ross fans if they contain their over-enthusiasm.
I apologize to everyone. I will not respond to him anymore. I should have known better.
I feel I can return to posting on here now that there's an Ignore button.
Being from the UK, Eaten Alive was a pretty successful album here [[#11), thanks to the Gold record Chain Reaction. I remember loving it at the time, and playing it a lot. I wasn't struck on the Bee Gees backgrounds and think it would have been better without them, but most of the songs were good, with the exception of I Love Being In Love With You. I'd have ditched that and gone with another uptempo number. It was light on potential radio cuts, with maybe Crime Of Passion being the missed opportunity single. Definitely would have done better than Experience here, even Oh Teacher might have been successful instead of a b-side, or even a reissue of the title track.
Looking back, although her RCA period is my favourite, this is the album I play the least, and I put that down to the Bee Gees backing vocals mainly. On reflection, it was a bit 'old' sounding after the very fresh Swept Away. Unfortunately she wasn't picky about material, which I can attest to after meeting Gary Katz a couple of years ago. I think if she'd been more invested in her music it would have been better.
I loved the cover at the time, now, less so. I think she was trying to play on Thriller with it.
That is so true. He will usually be the first to bring up her name on any thread. It's almost like he is salivating waiting to see how he can interject some derogatory "fact" [[as he puts it) into the mix. To his credit, however, he does provide links to some good videos and actually has some fresh information and perspectives to share. But will he ever lay off "her"? I think not.
Her RCA years were good in that she was free to try new and different things, which she did. The "Ross" album partly produced by Gary Katz is very good. I always enjoy listening to it. It's one of my summertime albums. The singles got a lot of rotation on Soul Train, too. It's one album during this era where she did not overindulge.
I don't mind the cover at all.Quote:
I loved the cover at the time, now, less so. I think she was trying to play on Thriller with it.
While album "Eaten Alive" wasn't her best effort, I think, at least here in the U.S., a big problem is that song "Chain Reaction". Here in the states, the single was remixed. The song just didn't fit 1985.
Again, there was so much great stuff in the year '85 that overshadowed Diana Ross that she ceased to matter. Sade, Whitney Houston, and Aretha Franklin got all the attention. Sade had the smooth jazz groove, Whitney had the looks and the pipes [[not the crack pipes), and Aretha made a big comeback on the pop charts even though she never left the R&B charts. What did these three have in common? They had the sound that people wanted to hear in the 80s.
Remember that I said the song "Dirty Looks" was an attempt to stay relevant? I've been listening to the hits of 1987, and it fits right alongside of things Steve Winwood and Robert Cray were doing. The R&B is sort of retro, but had an updated sound. But, the rest of the album, while I personally like it, reverted back to 1981. She really had lost her touch with the market. There was no way she was going to compete with Jody Watley, Whitney Houston, Expose, Taylor Dayne, and...Debbie Gibson? Ross had officially become an oldies act.
Yeah I don't feel like she had her eye on being particularly current. swept Away was definitely current, and I'd have liked to have seen something more like that with a cutting edge producer really. Even the R&B album wasn't a wise decision. Had I been RCA I'd have been on her back like a hot potato to get a product I could shift.
That said, we did get Chain Reaction out of it which is her biggest ever record in the UK.
Dirty Looks was good but again, speaking for the Brits, the Shep Pettibone mix of Shockwaves should have come out first. I think it'd have been a smash instead of a #76 squib.
It comes down to the fact she just wasn't that interested in the music.
Yet after that, returning to Motown, I think she was very interested in what she was doing.