Originally Posted by
RanRan79
I think you might be judging Baby It's Me from a rear view mirror. It's easy to think the album was passable and not what the public wanted because it ultimately didn't perform to the standard set by the quality of the album. Had Motown issued a single from the album, put Diana on TV to perform it, put all promo efforts behind it, she may have gotten a hit. From there the album comes out, she's on tour, she's doing tv, the second single drops. Now the album is really taking off. Disco is doing it's thing, but so is Baby It's Me.
The critics loved the album at the time. And certain markets were playing certain tracks like crazy, which means in the areas the songs were being heard, the public liked what they were hearing. The problem was that, because there was no official single yet, the markets were playing different tracks at the same time. And then Motown was screwing up the singles release schedule.
If you check out what was happening on the Hot 100 [[singles) during 1977 you'll see that the number one songs from that year were a hodge podge of sounds. You certainly had disco and disco adjacent cuts like "You Don't Have To Be A Star" and "Don't Leave Me This Way". But also uptempo funky cuts like "Got To Give It Up" and "Sir Duke". And then there's stuff like "Rich Girl", "Da Doo Ron Ron", "You Light Up My Life", "How Deep Is Your Love". The same would be true for the following year.
So I don't think Baby It's Me was what was wrong and something more disco-y was necessary in it's place. Had Motown done what the hell it was supposed to do, the discussion regarding Baby It's Me could've ended up very different. But I think it's important to look at the album and it's place in music at the time, rather than with hindsight. Disco was king, but it was in danger of being knocked off the thrown every week by a non disco cut. Not chasing that particular trend could have paid off nicely.
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