Bluebrock, I only find fault with Gibb's voice alongside Barbra's on the "Guilty" album. I think he has considerable talent as a songwriter and producer, and as a vocal artist in his own right. I love the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack and the title song from "Grease." As noted, "Heartbreaker" is one of Dionne's best efforts at Artista, I love it. Coincidentally, during the Christmas break I saw an excellent Bee Gees documentary "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart" on HBO in the U.S. So his artistry is impressive.
That said, "Eaten Alive" is an unforgivable assault on the senses 🙂
I get it. We all have opinions and share them here unreservedly. The folks at SD have great knowledge and appreciation for music. I love SD and always come here for a boost. We can all tolerate and participate in a little shade-throwing.
But it is jarring to read comments dismissing Barbra Streisand as if she were Apollonia Kotero. Given her longevity, the quality of her recording output and the magnitude of her gift she deserves respect on her name. It's OK to never listen to her, it is less OK to disparage her.
Somewhere in the world there are people who cannot appreciate Aretha Franklin -- I don't ever want to know them.
when Streisand and Summer were recording "Enough Is Enough" both were seated on stools alongside each other in the recording booth..as they both belted out their notes Donna actually passed out and fell off the stool..she later recalled drily that when she came to she looked up to see Streisand still sitting there..holding the same note lol
I think it would have been much better if a Gibb album had come after the Chic one, preferably with an up-tempo song like Chain Reaction.
Thic Chic sound became less popular after 1980 - thanks to 'disco sucks' etc - that year was really its' last hurrah [[until later when critics and listeners realised how great the music had been).
I'd argue Diana hadn't quite 'successfully alternated' in the late 70s. After 'Love Hangover' she didn't really have a major hit [[only one single out of the ten released made the top 20) until 'Upside Down'.
The Boss and its' singles deserved more success certainly but I blame Motown's poor marketing for this [[and for even 'diana' and its' singles not achieving more success).
For me, the kid, the 'alternating' didn't really work. I remember seeing Diana's new single at the record store and rushing home to play it. "Oh" said I as 'It's My Turn' started to play. "She's gone back to the dreary old ballads"..
If my memory serves me correct, a lot of fans at the time felt exactly the same way. Diana lost a lot of the momentum she had built when “To Love Again” was released.
She had successfully proved she could appeal to a younger generation then suddenly here she was back to same old.
I agree in that a Gibb collaboration might have been better accepted coming after the ‘diana’ album. Preferably featuring plenty of up-tempo songs.
Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards shaped the sound of 80s pop and rock. Nile produced the biggest selling albums in the careers of David Bowie [["Let's Dance") and Madonna [["Like A Virgin"). Separately, they produced the biggest hits Robert Palmer, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart and Duran Duran had during the decade.
Apparently, Disco only sucked when Black artists made it.
Yes, there are indeed people who don't/can't appreciate the Queen Aretha. It is jarring when confronted with it, but I don't pass judgement. If we all liked and appreciated the same stuff the world would be super boring. As for me, I wouldn't categorize any of my opinion regarding Streisand as "shade-throwing". She does nothing for me, although I do respect her talent. She has been a lauded vocalist at a time when you had to have real talent to be so well respected. But while I'm no Apollonia fan either, I would listen to "Sex Shooter" all day before one Barbra song, even the ones I like, cuz I love me some "Sex Shooter".
Interesting takes! And it is enlightening to ponder the different ways Diana's fans of different age groups might have viewed her output. I was a baby during this time, so for me I look at it all with hindsight and it's hard for me to see anyone thinking Diana was a has been at that point in her career. But I can see a point where Baby It's Me and The Boss, even "It's My Turn" might have appealed to a more mature crowd than a bunch of 14 year olds.
I think Diana's best bet post diana80 was Quincy Jones, maybe Lionel Richie. I also would've loved her working with Arif Mardin.
I'm sure you're well aware of the racist component to the disco backlash. I would add though that the folks you mention being produced by Chic throughout the 80s weren't recording disco music. Dance tunes, sure, but not disco. Not to mention that none of that stuff sounds like Chic. The Chic sound was a huge part of the disco explosion. Diana recorded a Chic album. Remove her and replace with Chic's vocals and no one would've been the wiser. That was not the case with Like A Virgin.
I was always a huge Diana fan, starting from a small child. LOVE HANGOVER came out when I was in maybe the 4th or 5th grade. That was a popular song with my peers but I think Diana was thought of as sort of old-fashioned. I remember being so excited that I was going to see Diana's AN EVENING WITH DIANA ROSS live in concert. My teacher was impressed but the kids weren't. Later, I remember bringing the AN EVENING WITH DIANA ROSS album to music class. By mistake, the teacher put the needle down on THE LADY IS A TRAMP and the kids were like "Why are you playing that? That's jazz!" and similar comments. Things settled down when she put the needle on LOVE HANGOVER.
After that, I don't recall Diana being all that popular with my peers again until THE BOSS and then when she really invented herself with the "diana" album. Suddenly she was looking and sounding hip, until maybe 1985 or so.
Thanks for the added recollections Reese. I guess from now on when dissecting Diana's career and hypothesizing on would'a, should'a, could'as, I have to come at it from two different angles: the adult fans and the young fans. Yeah, thanks a lot Reese. That means more work for my brain.
Although Nile, Bernard & Tony were the backbone of the music on that Madonna album as they were with every Chic production to this point. And the original Chic singer Norma Jean Wright had even done back-up vocals on Madonna's first album [[including on 'Holiday'. Back then, Madonna knew where the talent was at.
Yeah - I was just trying to think back to my teenage years and seeing that hot black & white Diana in the tight jeans on the album cover singing dance tunes. Wow - she's not some old lady in fur stoles & a ball gown doing the Mum & Dad ballads
I like those ballads much more now that I'm just out of my teenage years of course
I guess it's the same dichotomy teen fans who loved the Supremes in the 60s might have felt if they bought a copy of 'At the Copa'. '"OMG why is the hottest pop group in the world singing these show tunes?"
A Lionel Richie written/produced album could have been great - especially with up-temp songs like 'Dancing on the Ceiling' or 'Running with the Night' rather than just 10 'Hellos'. Even one side of an album with someone like Daryl Hall doing the flip side.
Quincy Jones would have been a great producer but it would all have depended on the songs that might have been available.
i tend to agree with you here. Upside Down and I'm Coming Out are very notable Diana Ross hits but unlike Mountain, it is possible to imagine someone else singing them and doing well on the charts.
same with many of the sup songs. No one but Diana could sing Baby Love. But i think other artists might have also had a big hit with Love Is Here or maybe My World Is Empty. while the songs are definitely recognizable Sup hits, they're somehow not as "signature" as some others.
i agree that the To Love Again album we got was essentially a soap opera album. over the top mega ballads, dripping with strings and harps, etc.
of the 4 new songs, Stay With Me sort of has a bit more pop beat. barely
My assumption is that with this album, Masser was FINALLY going to get his own entire DR album to produce. I'm also assuming that he would have had enough sense to not simply offer up 9 tearjerker ballads. he would have to provide some variety on it. some simpler songs [[like the old and lovely To Love Again), some upbeat numbers.
what we ended up with was a compromise in order to get It's My Turn onto some sort of album. it was too big of a hit to not find a home somewhere other than the movie soundtrack.
I would say she was hip again until the single Why Do Fools Fall In Love” was released. One for the mums and dads. I was 18 when the single came out and remember my friends ribbing me about the song and subsequent album calling it “Ross dross”.
Being a massive Diana fan I defended the song and album, even though I hated both.
Ollie - how did your friends respond to Mirror or Muscles? agree that WDFFIL is bubblegum. but did she bring them back with these much more aggressive sounds and styles?
while i enjoy the Why album, i do think if she'd taken a few of the stronger songs on the album and focused on those and that style, you might have a much better artistic statement for a DEBUT. Mirror, Sweet Surrender, think i'm in love and the backing track to Work that Body [[with completely different lyrics - perhaps you could keep the title as something steamy and lightly erotic)
Late to this debate...
I think Diana would have sung this song from Guilty really beautifully.
It has all the components of a fabulous recording. A simple level of instrumentation and the use of a gospel choir at the end over which Diana's vocals would have soared.
https://youtu.be/ov9Bu1FGodY
Last edited by rovereab; 01-13-2021 at 02:20 PM.
I was in high school when disco hit its peak. Prior to that I was always into black music, groups like PFunk, Rufus, David Ruffin, Labelle, Emotions etc. but most of my friends were not. They were into groups I hated like Cheap Trick, Bob Seegar [[sp), Rush--I know because due to wanting to fit in I'd go to these shows and watched the clock the whole time, bored stiff. Only a handful of my white friends were into black music--it was, at the time, sort of an underground thing. Knowing and liking The Ohio Players was "cool." Anyway when disco first hit, people were kind of into it. it started out being underground and very hip. Then it got ridiculous.Suddenly EVERYTHING was about disco, dancing, ridiculous clothes and hair. Suburbanites completely highjacked it and it showed.When songs like Disco Duck and Funky Town started to get played incessantly everywhere you went people rebelled against it. Even beloved rock artists like Elton John and The Rolling Stones started putting out disco. That was the end. The fact that so many of the artists were black had nothing to with it. I never once heard any of my white friends say they hated black artists because they didn't. The same people who LOVED Ohio Players and Earth Wind and Fire hated disco. Disco killed many of these acts off and they knew it and didn't like it.That is a side to the story that people pretend didn't happen.It gets really tiresome reading racist comments like "disco was only bad when black people did it." It's a lie and it never was true. Motown would never have happened if not for all those racist white record buyers in the 60's, long before disco. The actual truth is that disco went off the rails, got redundant and formulaic and people rebelled against it. When formally fantastic groups like Rufus Chaka Khan started writing songs about DANCING, like I'm Dancing For Your Love, lots of people lost interest including me.
I was in my 20's in the early 80's. Diana Ross was a reigning Pop Queen in 1980, along with Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, Olivia Newton-John and Donna Summer. But she hadn't had a #1 Pop hit since Love Hangover and Theme From Mahogany. After the tepid response to Baby, It's Me and The Boss and the failure of The Wiz, I was concerned about her trajectory. Diana 1980 shot her back into the Pop stratosphere. [[I think the stunning cover played a major part, too.) It was such a mega-hit and event album that it helped ensure her Pop royalty status for a few years, in spite of To Love Again and the RCA years [[until 1984-5 anyways). The mega-hit duet Endless Love also helped.
Although I was disappointed in To Love Again as a follow-up, I welcomed another Diana Ross album and enjoyed the new Michael Masser songs and productions. I believed she would give us something stunning and cutting-edge again, soon. [[Little did I know )
I guess I accepted and welcomed To Love Again in 1981 just as I accepted and welcomed the Supremes At The Copa, Supremes Sing Rodgers & Hart and I Hear A Symphony albums, even before I was a teenager. I just wanted to hear that voice!
Last edited by lucky2012; 01-13-2021 at 04:42 PM.
this is one of my favorites from that album!!! i agree DR would have been gorgeous on it.
not that i was trying to be negative on Babs earlier and this song absolutely does display her magnificence in singing. how she makes those jumps on the chorus "gotta get a little of the LOVE inside"
goosebumps
Not so much that I remember. There were just to many dime a dozen bullshit songs on the album to make a difference. “The Boss” And “Diana” were solid, vibrant albums that appealed to the youth market. WDFFIL contained A couple of decent, contemporary songs but that was about it. Once you start recording old chestnuts like “Sweet Nothings” and pure dross like “Two Can Make It” you lose some of that cred.
An album of Diana Ross produced by Luther Vandross would have soared! 1980's "diana" was a smart business move. Disco was still funky and Diana Ross captured the youth market. If she had made 100 albums with Michael Masser, I would have bought every one. The musical chemistry between them continues to be magical, as in the recordings. Make love to a ballad, or perhaps, discover the lover in a ballad...
Yes, you are correct. You did not shade Streisand. Likening her to a "bowl of mayo" is disparagement not 'shade-throwing.'
I threw shade at Apollonia by pulling her into a discussion where she has no place.
But I agree that you've every right to voice your opinion, even if it is disparaging.
I agree that there was an obvious racial component to the disco 'blacklash.' However, the Chic sound was already evolving beyond disco. Their work with Deborah Harry was the intermediary step between "diana" and "Like A Virgin." Their own 80s albums contained songs that would have been pop hits for white artists -- Bowie, Duran Duran, etc. Nile and Bernard are still being penalized for their association with disco. Chic had the best rhythm section of any band of any genre -- but have been shut out of the RNR Hall of Fame year after year.
Not to derail this thread, but I know someone who thinks Aretha’s vocals are overrated.
I agree with all this, Bobby. I do think the racial element may have been a part of the backlash, though. And let's not forget the Gay backlash element. But I agree the biggest failure was the decreasing quality, increasing redundancy and sameness and all the major pop/rock stars jumping on the disco bandwagon. Thankfully, Diana Ross jumped aboard fairly early with Love Hangover [[thank you, Hal Davis!). I can barely listen to Barbra Streisand's Shake Me, Wake Me or Rod Stewart's Do Ya Think I'm Sexy. But I loved Blondie's Heart of Glass. Chic and the subsequent diana album were, luckily, cutting-edge progressive disco just as the backlash was beginning.
Thank you, lucky2012. The racist/sexist/homophobic undercurrents of the disco backlash, while not shared by all, were, nevertheless, intensely palpable and impossible to sweep under the rug:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/timelin...p/2d4e63b43a0e
Last edited by sansradio; 01-13-2021 at 07:26 PM.
That is not disparagement. Disparagement would've been "Streisand is a talentless, overrated has been" or some other nonsensical rant seeking to diminish her talent or status as a legend. I did not do that. What I did was jump on SB's analogy regarding how he/she feels when listening to her, which I found to be a fairly accurate description of how I feel when listening to her: it would give me about the same feeling as eating a bowl of mayo with bits of hamburger in it. And I stand by that analogy.
Thanks Lucky for such a thoughtful and accurate response to that. I love a lot of disco music, although there is some that I don't care for. Personally, I think that disco's backlash was due to how rhythmic the genre is. A singer couldn't really "Pat Boone" disco. What I mean by that is, with r&b and rock and roll, white artists, in particular, were able to take it and turn it into their own brand of pop. A good disco track could make the poppiest [[i.e. white) singer come across with a certain amount of soul. There really was no way to take it and transform it into something less soulful. Am I making any sense here? I hope so. I'm trying to explain myself and I'm not sure if I'm coming across the way I hope. Anyway, for instance, "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" was #5 on the soul chart; "I Love the Nightlife" was #31; even Cher hit #21 with "Take Me Home". And yeah, on top of the racial aspect, the gay tie in probably pushed the issue over the edge.
"A singer of dreary love songs best suited to K-Tel albums!" LOL!!! Post of the year!!
The person I was referring to never says anything bad about Aretha. They just don’t think her voice is all that. Raised on gospel music, so knows and appreciates good soulful singing. As far as contemporary singers, they rate Patti and Gladys above Aretha vocally.
Lucky I agree with you about DR's album with Chic. It came out right before things went radically downhill in terms of disco. Anyway, I never once heard any racial animosity over disco. I also never observed any gay backlash because back then, people didn't even talk about gay people. I remember thinking people on average would rather their kid be a serial killer than gay. That's how bad it was. I remember my grandmother telling me, gravely, that the guy who cut her hair might be "funny." The whole subject was as taboo as it could get. Thank God things have changed for the better. I never knew anybody who was racist though. In fact, when I went back to Western NY for my 20th graduation a few years ago, I took out my cheesy little high school yearbook to refresh my memory. To my amazement, my high school class was packed with "minorities"--I had no clue at the time. Nobody thought about it.I mean one of my friend's names was Pablo Lugo!! LOL!! We were just friends, not separate species.Today that's all changed.
I am one of the people who always felt Aretha was overrated. Sorry but I found her screechy. I always felt Scherrie Payne or Chaka Khan were much better singers--they could sing any type of music and pull it off. Aretha not so much iMO
Disco didn’t really die. It just morphed into ‘dance music’ and split into multiple factions, i.e.; house, Chicago house, trance, techno, freestyle, dance pop, EDM, drum and bass, electronica, trip-hop, etc. It has continued to hit the pop charts regularly, just under different names.
I also think that disco became so popular and was eclipsing all other genres of music [[the way hip/hop and r&b is currently doing) that there was a backlash not necessarily from the listeners and buyers of music, but from white DJs and program directors who favored rock, metal and punk music. Since they could not compete with discos popularity, they tried to kill it off. Disco is nothing but dance music, rock, metal and punk rock...not so much.
There is no way in hell that Berry Gordy would have allowed the Bee Gees to produce an album on Diana Ross while she was signed to Motown and if she had still been with Motown in 85, there is no way Mr. Gordy would have allowed the Eaten Alive to have been recorded or released. And thank God. I truly RESPECT your opinion and insight on music and especially Diana Ross, but no sir, this collaboration ranks right up there with Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney doing Ebony & Ivory and Michael Jackson and Paul McCartey doing The Girl Is Mine and Say, Say, Say. Instantly forgettable and regrettable.
Amen, SatansBlues.Those horrible songs were beneath all of them
now Satan, lol. I don't know that he would have forbidden the Bee Gees from working with her in the late 70s. of course we all know it would not have been a remote possibility mostly because of their being on different labels and the Bee Gees were mostly producing themselves. they did some with others but not like they would in the 80s.
but i'm not aware of Berry having any sort of dislike with the Gibbs disco content. or that IF some truly bizarre alignment of the stars occurred and the Gibbs reached out to Motown to see if something could happen, i don't think Berry would have just ignored the concept
Interesting post Bobby. I agree with it in parts. [[Ohio Players and EW&F also did disco btw). To bring race into the backlash issue , is easy to want to do these days, but back then , it wasn't about that, at all. Disco was the most equal opportunistic music ever, it wasn't burdened by labels of black ,white , brown, American , European, Canadian, male, female ....etc... And you could likely find white producers producing blacks , and black producers producing whites ....or not ! [[who cared ? who noticed?).
The backlash was about the displacement of music by disco on radio stations that otherwise played other formats , both on rock and on soul stations ... abetted by the realization the entire scene was fueled by an emerging gay culture.
BTW, all these years later, seeing The Ohio Players at the Circle Star Theatre in 1976 at their peak [[and they were living the truth of, "when you're hot ,you're hot!") , was likely my best musical performance experience of them all. Right up there for sure.
Last edited by Boogiedown; 01-15-2021 at 03:20 AM.
Bookmarks