What was going wrong? There are those fans who contend this is Diana’s best RCA album, and they blame a lack of proper single choice, promotion, and negative publicity surrounding Ross for the album’s lackluster performance in her home country. Those factors are all probably true, but another clear problem is that Diana Ross doesn’t sound like Diana Ross on Eaten Alive. At all. The culprit is the singer’s incredible talent for mimicry; just listen to her discography and watch her TV specials, filled with striking examples of Miss Ross imitating another artists to startling effect. Here, she goes so far adapting her style to Gibb’s that her voice is generally high, thin, and raspy, totally eradicating the rich soulful tone of recent hits like “Missing You” and “Swept Away.” Because Gibb’s demos for the album have since been released, it’s clear that Diana rarely strayed from his guide vocals; on certain tracks, it’s tough to tell their voices apart. In a time when bigger voices — in terms of both power and range — were beginning to dominate popular music, Diana Ross was allowing hers to shrink away.
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