What if? Michael Masser, Songwriter and Richard Perry, Producer for an entire Diana

[TNSUN]

I like the works Michael Masser and Richard Perry. An album produced by Richard Perry and with songs by Michael Masser would have been grand."I Thought it Took A Little Time /but today I fell in love" and "All of You" are both magical songs. Diana's vocals are these songs seems to suggest she should have focused more on these great stylists. I am grateful for all the song gems revealed by the chemistry of these great artists.

p.s. "All of You" and "ITITALT" perhaps has Diana within the top tier of her vocal recordings.

[TNSUN]

This extended remix has had 4.3 million views on you tube in 2yrs. I wish a romantic movie could be made with this song as its theme. https://youtu.be/NrWzghdkBbg?si=hRpqp3dM12iXAsfG

[RanRan79]

My first instinct was to pass on this one. I just find a lot of Masser stuff of the 70s a bit on the boring side, with a few exceptions. I always find Richard Perry to be a mixed bag. Sometimes he'll create something that knocks me out- like Diana's BIM album or the Pointers Special Things- but some of his other stuff just doesn't do it for me, like the Pointers Energy album.

But, I could probably get behind this collaboration in the 80s. I like and love most of the albums he did for the Pointers in the 80s. He knocked me out with the stuff he did for Jeffrey Osborne on the Emotional album. Couple that with the fact that Masser wrote so much fantastic stuff in the 80s. IMO he stepped his game up from those largely boring pop easy listening fluff he often did for Diana and others in the 70s and early 80s. Can't beat what he did for Whitney and there are a lot of other great tunes he did in the middle to late part of the decade. He was able to transform that easy listening fluff into things that rose to the occasion on a grander scale.

So fusing their two styles for Diana in the 80s might have made for a very good, maybe even excellent, album, especially if rather than working together, the album was made up of a bag of their individual productions, maybe with Richard executively producing.

Makes more sense than EA and RHRAB to me.

[sup_fan]

Masser supposedly was interested in working with Diana into the 80s but she was not. so he turned his attention to Whitney. the songs he did with her are true classics and of course they are building on the style and sound of things like Touch Me In the Morning and It's My Turn. Whitney absolutely has her own style and sound and it's great to hear her add that to this genre of big, melodramatic, soap-sudsy mega ballads.

could Diana have sang many of the tunes Whitney eventually did? sure. they would have been very different in outcome but still beautiful

would those songs with Diana singing them still have become hits? i'm not sure. whitney was nearly 20 years younger than Diana and so it's really more a matter of the current youth market wanting someone close to their generation. rewind 10 or 15 years and i think diana could have had big hits with Hold Me or The Greatest Love.

[Albator]

With Perry producing, we would have a less syrupy production and a more straightforward performance without excessive affectation.

[marybrewster]

Could Diana have created an "Endless Love II" if she'd recorded HOLD ME as a duet with Teddy Pendergrass?

[Ollie9]

Could Diana have created an "Endless Love II" if she'd recorded HOLD ME as a duet with Teddy Pendergrass?

I doubt it with “Hold Me”, but perhaps another song. “Best Years” with Luther might have caught the publics imagination, or even a Duet with Lionel in 91 with “When You Tell Me That You Love Me”.