Originally Posted by
Bokiluis
Clive approached the signing of Dionne to reestablish her status as one of the classic divas. Though at Warner Bros., they were able to get her to work with top producers. Difference is Clive has always had respect for the Adult Contemporary radio format as a medium to promote certain artists and/or singles. Whereas most labels thought of Adult Contemporary stations as the place for established soft rock/adult sounding ballads or worse as only for oldies. Combining efforts at some urban [[R&B) stations with Adult Contemporary AirPlay, gave fuel for crossing over to more Pop/Mainstream stations. That made songs like "Deja Vu" and/or "Love Power" much bigger records than to depend on Top 40 Mainstream stations to have the endurance for records like those to finally reach its full potential.Clive certainly gave Dionne more natural critical and commercial success than she ever experienced at Warner Bros., sometimes even rivaling her classic Bacharach/David Scepter material. Whereas with say Aretha, save for maybe "Freeway of Love", Aretha and/or audience interest leans far more for her Atlantic years. Despite big hits like "Jump to It" or "I Knew You Were Waiting For Me", her concert repertoire focuses on the Atlantic years. For Aretha, only the Columbia years are given less time than her Arista material.Audiences are deeply divided/clearly on how they feel about Aretha's Atlantic years vs. Arista years. With Dionne, it's less defined.To think that in many years, Aretha and Dionne have had more charted Billboard singles than Diana is a little surprising. That is almost exclusively due to Clive's persistence in marketing/promoting singles. After the "Reservations for Two" album, Clive wisely stated to Dionne that "at this point in your career, you don't have to chase single hits". Henceforth came the elegant concept albums like "Sings Cole Porter" and "Aquarela do Brazil" arguably two nice lifestyle albums. Unfortunately, Arista wasn't successful in conceptually bringing those albums to the "soccer mom"/adult audience. They needed television specials, tons of print features, etc. By 1994, Arista was so wildly successful that in those post-"Bodyguard" years...artists like Dionne got lost. Kind of like after holiday 1968 when Motown had 5 of the Top 10 Billboard singles, A-level artists like Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles coupled with the massive success of "T.C.B." and the supergroup DianaRoss & The Supremes WITH The Temptations became the label's key focus. Unfortunately, good records got lost and artists like Gladys Knight & The Pips though having had the first version of "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" go to a very hot #2 on Billboard, gets bested by Marvin a year later... spending 7 weeks at #1 selling well over 3 million singles...also felt like they didn't have top label support.
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