BARRY WHITE REVIEWS:
I've Got So Much to Give (1973)
Stone Gon' (1973)
Can't Get Enough (1974)
Rhapsody in White (1974)
Together Brothers (1974)
White Gold (1974)
Just Another Way to Say I Love You (1975)
Let the Music Play (1976)
Is this Whatcha Wont? (1976)
Sings For Someone You Love (1977)
The Man (1978)
I Love to Sing the Songs I Sing (1979)
The Message is Love (1979)
Sheet Music (1980)
Barry & Glodean (1981)
The Right Night & Barry White (1987)
The Man is Back! (1989)
I've Got So Much to Give (1973)
Album Score: 7
Barry White is known for two things: his lush orchestration to funk music and his smarmy bedroom voice. His orchestrations are usually fine and occasionally inspired. The work he did for the album opener, “Standing in the Shadow of Love” is has a few wonderful arrangement and compositional ideas albeit they were a tad clunky in the execution. But look no further than the entirely pedestrian work with the title track to see how horrible White oftentimes gets. It’s eight minutes long, it goes nowhere and it’s utterly tedious in the process.
This album contains five 6+ minute compositions most of which only had enough ideas for a three minutes each. His idea to mumble bedroom talk might have garnered his trademark, which is one thing, but they seem too much like methods to overextend these tracks due to a severe lack of good musical ideas! Well, I’ll go so far as to say that it was a nice idea for one track, but he opens tracks two – five with this nonsense and it gets tiresome quickly. Oh well…
Naturally, this is his first album, and he get better later in his career, although he’s going to continue making these mistakes…
I love the voice, though! It’s soothing, and he does deliver an exceedingly good performance with the opening track (opting for more of an energetic/spirited vibe instead of his smooth, sensual act). I should also mention the closing track, “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby” contains an excellent, “alarmed” atmosphere. Alas, I do believe there was a great deal of talent in Barry White… he just wasn’t too gifted (or interested) in fully fleshing that out.
Read the track reviews:
I've Got So Much to Give
Stone Gon' (1973)
Album Score: 7
Ack! OK, here’s the thing: Just what did this guy think of his audience? Did he really think we really needed to hear an overextended, simple chord progression over the course of nine minutes? Am I going crazy, or is this a completely CRAP idea? I sure hope that if you’re a fan of this album, you don’t consider yourself sophisticated! … And this is coming from the same person who gave The Sex Pistols a glowing review!
I promised myself I wouldn’t go nuts reviewing Barry White, but it seems I’m already breaking it. For the most part, Stone Gon’ is a clone of the previous album. Again, he writes enough ideas for a 10-minute EP, but he extends it over the course of 40 minutes. That’s 30 minutes you could have spent one something a little more useful like saving the world! … or at least listening to The Sex Pistols.
And when I say 10 minutes worth of ideas, only about six minutes of them were good ones. The album opener, “Girl It’s True” is a bore from beginning to end. At least his debut album had something marginally exciting and a tad more complex. Furthermore, his arrangements there are strictly pedestrian and he spends almost three minutes at the beginning mumbling. He should have reordered the album to open with “Honey Please, Can’t You See,” which is much tighter, more musically advanced and, heck, catchy! The album closer, “Never Never Gonna Give You Up” is nearly fantastic whose only fatal flaw is the eight-minute running length and it’s already tiresome after five minutes. Still, the atmosphere is a little more tense and heightened there with more creative arrangements and melodies than his norm.
The album’s mid-section consists of the two most bloated tracks, “You’re My Baby” and “Hard to Believe I Found You.” The few musical ideas they have were mediocre to begin with, and he felt the need to stuff them down our throats for a combined 16 minutes. If you can think of a good reason of either of those two tracks to exist, then my hat’s off to you.
Read the track reviews:
Stone Gon'
Can't Get Enough (1974)
Album Score: 9
The musical improvement was as big as his waistline. Not only was Barry White getting his song length under control, but his musical ideas were far richer and creative than he’s ever been responsible for! For the most part, this album is entertaining and full of relatively well-written and performed bedroom-soul ditties. The only blemish (and is a pretty major one, unfortunately) is his 10-minute sweetie binge “I Can’t Believe You Love Me.” As usual, it’s an overextended track with a limited amount of ideas. However, this one’s certainly less tedious than his binges in past albums… Yes, White is improving on *all* facets! Make no mistake about that.
But in the end, I suppose the guy is just a singles artist. There’s really no reason to own any of his albums. However, if you happen to be shopping around on Rhapsody or iTunes one day, be sure to check out “You’re the First, the Last, the Everything.” It encompasses everything Barry White was ever striving to be as a pop star, except it’s perfect --- or at least as close to perfect as he was ever willing to get. He keeps his mumbly intro and lavish orchestra completely intact except, for once, it completely rules. … I’m glad he managed to get it right at least once! “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love Babe” isn’t nearly as phenomenal, but it does have a catchy melody!
Brief instrumentals bookend the album… “Mellow Mood, Pt. 1” is White’s greatest introduction so far even though the concluding second part isn’t nearly as endearing. The rest of the songs are wisely kept under five minutes even though the musical ideas aren’t particularly compelling.
This is so close to being a wholly recommendable album! Too bad he let it slip away from him…
Read the track reviews:
Can't Get Enough
Rhapsody in White (1974)
Album Score: 8
Under the moniker of “The Love Unlimited Orchestra,” Barry White released this grand festival of instrumentals onto the public! Why did he do this? Because the public deserved a chance to see all White could do with the orchestra! Oh, how amazing the man is!!! …Forgive the sarcasm…
Anyway, the guy doesn’t sing on the album, which *might* be considered both a good and bad thing. Even though I like his deep singing voice, his refusal to show off his singing chops might also mean he’d refrain from his already tired old routine of mumbling at the beginning of his songs. Of course, that’s just wishful thinking… The old creep is still mumbling away. He’s getting rather carried away to with “Baby Blues” already sounding like a Barry White parody. How embarrassing for him! It’s more clear than ever that his trademark subtracts from each and every song it plagues. It was a bad idea to begin with! SHUT YOUR FREAKING MOUTH ALREADY!!
White was nice enough to greatly improve his orchestral abilities. Without that, this pointless would have been positively tedious. His textures are frequently very nice, and he has a better sense of development than he used to. What remains is a perfectly nice album full of cheesy ‘70s orchestral tracks with tons of funk guitar and scaling violins. The lack of decent melodies is the principle downfall, however… there’s not one memorable song of the bunch. I’ll give you that he was going for “moods” instead of melodies, but that still shouldn’t mean he should shirk his duties. This wasn’t a movie soundtrack anyway, and it’s very mainstream. (It’s not like Barry White was a budding Brian Eno or anything.)
For a pointless album, I’ll have to say that I enjoyed it (except for the awful bits).
Read the track reviews:
Rhapsody in White
Together Brothers (1974)
Album Score: 7
I get the feeling that White was interested in releasing these “Love Unlimited Orchestra” albums, because he wanted to score a movie soundtrack. Well, his dream came true! Here is a film soundtrack! This might not be the sort of thing you’d expect… This doesn’t sound like it belongs on a cheap blaxploitation movie. Obviously, he’d done his homework and picked up a few Ennio Morricone soundtracks! Unfortunately, what happened is this music ends up sounding much more like a cheap imitation than an inspired piece of work. Honestly, this isn’t very good … even for a movie soundtrack.
I love listening to a good soundtrack now and again. Nothing like the melodic beauty of John Barry, the atmospheric genius of Morricone and the unbeatable class of Philip Glass to fulfil my needs! Unfortunately, Barry White’s work comes up woefully short. I’ll just come out and say it: This is BORING. I’ll take it further and call it damn boring. I’ll give you that the nature of film soundtracks works against it as usual. This music isn’t designed to listen to alone! You’re supposed to be watching a movie with it (one that I haven’t seen). True that might be, it doesn’t forgive the fact that it’s BORING.
One good thing that came out of it was that, for once, White managed to abandon the use of overlong tracks. He’s also not mumbling at all, anymore, which I do not miss whatsoever! This is much more of a hodgepodge of a variety of ideas… Unfortunately, White just didn’t have too many great ones. The best moments of the album is the singing track “Somebody’s Gonna Off the Man” featuring White’s nice, deep vocals. The melody is fine and the atmosphere is well developed. All of that said, some of the cinematic instrumental tracks are quite nice. If you want to know more about them, then I invite you to visit the track reviews.
Read the track reviews:
Together Brothers
White Gold (1974)
Album Score: 7
It’s been well established for a few albums now that Barry White’s orchestration ability came far from his freshman and sophomore pop album and he’s no longer doing massive, 10-minute exercises in overly repetitive nonsense. These are huge improvements. However, while sometimes pleasant, he still has an awful lot of trouble coming up with memorable melodies.
For the most part, this is a clone of Rhapsody in White, an instrumental album that appeared on the music shelves earlier that year. (He also released Together Brothers that year, but I'm excluding it from this discussion since it’s a soundtrack.) Both albums are weak and rather pointless, and it’s such a shame he couldn’t sit down and concentrate his efforts into a single album that’s actually worth owning. Oh well… you were probably never interested in owning Barry White albums, and it should stay that way!
The absolute worst songs on the album happen to bookend it, “Barry’s Love.” This severe lack of taste resulted in a one-degree blow to the album score that wouldn’t have occurred if it appeared somewhere in the middle. A huge lapse of taste! It would have been much better if he let “Satin Soul” open the proceedings… It’s a rather glorious, driving tune that’s catchy and absolutely fun to hear. I’d wager even those who don’t think Barry White instrumentals are appealing whatsoever might enjoy indulging in that one! The immediate predecessor to that is the suave “Always Thinking of You” and proves that White could be desperately cool if he put forth the needed effort.
The album’s midsection is rather unmemorable. “Spanish Lei” had a pang of inspiration, but White didn’t spend enough time giving it the proper development! Songs like “You Make Me Feel Like This” not only lack a good theme whatsoever, but they go nowhere! Such a waste of space! … But I suppose I should be grateful that White’s not trying to expand 10 minutes worth of musical ideas into 40 minutes again.
White tries channeling Burt Bacharach with a minor gem at the end, “Just Living it Up.” It doesn’t leave an impression after you’re done hearing it, but it can be a very pleasant tune for a happy drive in the country or something.
Read the track reviews:
White Gold
Just Another Way to Say I Love You (1975)
Album Score: 9
More proof that Barry White is just a singles artist… which is too bad considering approximately 1/2 of this album is worth owning. The first two tracks are fantastic and both represent the utter best of Barry White. “Heavenly, That’s What You Are To Me” features one of White’s most catchy melodies and perfect studio production and arranging. It’s not only entertaining but tasteful… And just when you think it couldn’t get any better than that, White calls your bluff by giving us the infectious pop tune “I’ll Do Anything You Want Me To.” That’s such a fantastic ditty! With its catchy and bouncy bass-line, you can even dance to it if that’s your heart’s desire.
The song after that is … er … “All Because of You.” A rather lackluster ballad without quite the decent production standard. But it’s decent enough, and I’m quickly willing to forgive White for it. After all, he just gave us some of the happiest funk/soul/pop songs ever, so I’m willing to accept it. But then there’s ……… “Love Serenade (Part 1).”
Let me tell you a little something about that song. It sucks. Remember how I said, in my previous Barry White reviews, that I found it distasteful whenever White mumbled obscene bedroom talk for the first two minutes of his tracks? … I don’t find the content of the mumbling distasteful; I just find it distasteful as someone who wants to hear music from a musician. Well, he devotes that entire four-minute track to that inane mumbling. I took a partial transcript of it if you’re interested in the track reviews. I find it pretty funny, actually, but I also have to recognize that it was intended for an audience who didn’t think it was funny. And it’s just filler.
Speaking of filler, what’s with that 10-minute track “Let Me Live My Life Loving You?” I sit through the whole thing waiting for something interesting to happen, but it never does. He doesn’t help matters by ending the album with “Love Serenade (Part II),” which is three-minutes worth of the world’s clunkiest groove. Either White was getting LAZY or he had fallen in love with a vacuum cleaner that doesn’t work. Utter rubbish!
Read the track reviews:
Just Another Way to Say I Love You
Let the Music Play (1976)
Album Score: 8
This is where reviewing Barry White albums starts to get very tiring. He’s the sort of artist that find his niche and stays comfortably there. He doesn’t change his act even slightly, and it gets staler and staler as a result. …This effect isn’t so much on the listener but with the songwriter himself. If he’s content with just staying with the status quo, then there’s nothing else to strive for. This is the impression that I get by hearing this album… However, looking at how I scored the individual songs, it’s evident that this is one of White’s best albums.
There’s only one major cock-up, “I’m So Blue and You Are Too.” Its problems lie well beyond the song title, I’m afraid. It’s an overly lengthy seven-minute piece of nonsense that has zero good musical ideas, and it’s a complete bore to sit through. It’s this sort of filler that prevents any Barry White album to achieving true “classic” status. However, the rest of the material ranges from good to mediocre. This means that Let the Music Play is the most consistent Barry White album! But I still wouldn’t recommend getting it, because it lacks the presence of a great single --- he’s usually good for at least one of those.
The best track is clearly the closer and the album’s namesake… He starts it out with his tired mumbling routine except, for once, he brings it out of the bedroom and narrates his journey to the discotheque. There, he proclaims “Let the Music Play!” And everyone danced the night away. It’s a nice concept at least. It’s a shame that the melody couldn’t have been wonderful to go along with it --- it’s merely good.
The rest of the songs tend to get tiring after a minute of it has played. White’s compositions and arrangements aren’t nearly as good as they used to be. It’s obvious he didn’t work on them too hard on them. So, don’t feel any obligation to work too hard to enjoy the album, I suppose!
Read the track reviews:
Let the Music Play
Is This Whatcha Wont? (1976)
Album Score: 6
Let's be blunt. This album completely blows. Sorry. I mean, I respect Barry White—he was a good person and fine upstanding Christian. He might have had a lot of impure thoughts strewn throughout his albums, but at least he's being honest about it. But dude. This album sucks. The cover looks like his head is floating in a pool of vomit. That's very appropriate imagery.
Through no stretch of the matter, this is his worst album of his classic '70s period. And the major reason for this distinction is a nine-minute love ballad called “I Wanna Lay Down With You Baby” that sits in the middle of this disc like a steaming pile of walrus poo. I should probably re-listen to some of his other overextended ballads, but I'm pretty sure that's the worst song that White has ever done in the '70s. It would have made an utterly dreary and tedious two-minute song, but the fact they had to drag it on for a whopping nine minutes proves these guys wanted to torture us. I don't have anything against lengthy songs at all... The good ones are by progressive rock groups who normally try to pack in as much stuff as possible. But all that song does is repeat one poor hook for nine minutes until a fade-out. That's the sort of songwriting I would hope be beyond a six year old! Sometimes he sings, sometimes he does that bedroom mumbling stuff (that's more campy than usual) and sometimes he does nothing. Not worth listening to whatsoever.
“Your Love – So Good I Can Taste It” actually surpasses “I Wanna Lay Down With You Baby” in length. Fortunately, that track is just two overextended six-minute songs, so it's not nearly as tortuous! The first is a really dull but not unpleasant piece of Love-Orchestra-style elevator music. The second is a sloppy love ballad. Even though it doesn't quite give me a deathwish, it's still not really worth listening to. For that 12 minutes, it does nothing to excite me or interest me in any respect. It's the sort of song that I sit through like a zombie without any brains. I'd be better off listening to silence. BLAH!
The majority of the album was taken up by those two songs. The rest are much more moderately length, but even those seem too long! The album opener “Don't Make Me Wait Too Long” is easily the best song here. It has the tightest, most danceable groove on the whole album! “I'm Qualified to Satisfy You” and “Now I'm Gonna Make Love to You” are similar, but they're much sloppier and less hooky. I noticed White seems to be in the habit of overdubbing himself without harmonizing at all... He's just singing over himself with the exact same notes. There's more proof that these guys were being unforgivably lazy!
So in this whole Sahara Desert of a disc, the only good song was “Don't Make Me Wait Too Long.” However, I wouldn't call that song valuable enough for even his fans to look into purchasing this album. As I said earlier, this might make you want to kill yourself, so it's not worth it.
Read the track reviews:
Is This Whatcha Wont?
Sings For Someone You Love (1977)
Album Score: 8
The good news is that Barry White is keeping his bedroom mumbling to a minimum here. Sure, that’s one of his trademarks, but it has proved, to me, to be little more than strategies to extend the track lengths so that he could make his album LP-sized. Besides, his mumbling is irritating to me. Fortunately, “You Turned My Whole World Around” is the only mumbly song. Despite that, these songs do tend to be on the lengthy side, and the songs that aren’t lengthy don’t have too many good musical ideas. This is a highly inadequate album, and there’s hardly any reason to bother listening to it.
As long as you don’t mind that the running length should have been shaved off a little bit, “It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next to Me” is an enjoyable mid-tempo funk song with a catchy melody and a nice cool tempo. “Never Thought I’d Fall in Love With You” seems a bit more suited for the radio and only five minutes long, but even that one seemed too repetitive. The album opener “Playing Your Game, Baby” is pleasant, though it doesn’t seem to do much of anything.
But it doesn’t get much worse than “You Turned My Whole World Around.” I already mentioned that it features his mumbling noises, but what I didn’t mention that the song is as cheap as any cut-rate, washed-up lounge singer. The melody is awful and the whole thing is very nearly laughable. The closing track, “Of All the Guys in the World” has an appropriate four-minute running length, but all it consists of is a single, non-catchy line of melody that’s just repeated the whole time. He didn’t bother with anything like a “chorus” … it’s really irritating.
I do wish that Barry White would release a good album. I keep looking for ‘em, but they don’t seem to be popping up.
Read the track reviews:
Sings For Someone You Love
The Man (1978)
Album Score: 10
I was wondering when the Walrus of Love was going to finally stoop to the times and make proper disco dance songs! Funny that it took him three years after Main Course was released and one year after Saturday Night Fever swept the nation to do that. But here it is. Picture Barry White dancing the disco in his leisure suit on one of those flashing dance floors… I hope you’re not laughing, because it’s not funny. Disco is serious business, and it will never die.
Sometimes, interesting things present itself when you’re reviewing an artists’ discography, and the unexpected happens. Rush, for example, got better when the 1980s rolled around when most established acts were getting worse. Here is Barry White actually getting better when he jumped on the disco bandwagon. (He didn’t jump head-on… the second half of the album contains his usual act.) Part of this has to be due to happenstance… Disco is a whole lot more fun to listen to than his smooth soul outings. Plus, since only half of these songs are disco and the other half is smooth, Vegas soul, this greatly adds to the diversity. Add on the further fact that all of the songs are generally good……. Heck, I do believe this is the highest quality Barry White album I reviewed! The one big thing that sets The Man apart from his other albums is that there are no D-scoring tracks in it. At the same time, there are no clear A-level tracks, either. So it lacks what’s needed to be *great*, but it’s good enough to be “good.”
The album opener “Look At Her” is too long, but for four minutes, it was a perfectly groovy disco dance tune with a beat and a weird idea to include talking soundbytes to it. He tops himself with the catchier though perhaps not as fun “Your Sweetness is My Weakness.” But the funnest song of the album comes next, “Sha La La Means I Love You.” It’s a silly title, but a likable tune and it suggests that White was, finally, experimenting a bit more with his melodies. The album closer “Early Melody” has an interesting chord progression, which I don’t ever remember hearing this well in one of his pop albums. Quite good!
Now, all White needed to do was shorten these buggars all to less than five minutes (sorry, eight minutes is too dang long for a pop song if you don’t have the right instrumental innovation), think of a few other “hits” and he’ll start making great albums!
Read the track reviews:
The Man
I Love to Sing the Songs I Sing (1979)
Album Score: 8
Barry White's previous release, The Man was a bit of a diversion for him where he seemed to favor plastic disco songs. I Love to Sing the Songs I Sing is back to business as usual. The album is padded with his very normal love ballads with the occasional probing for a dance hit. This is a comparable album to all the others in his discography, and almost identical, stylistically. This has the usual amount of mildly pleasant ditties, painfully annoying ditties, and three-minute songs extended to eight minutes just to fill up the album.
My favorite track is the closer, “How Did You Know It Was Me?” It has about two minutes worth of introduction. A slow chord progressions is played quietly by the stings, and a synth-bass and horn comes in followed by a light piano. They take about two minutes before White actually sings anything. Naturally, the purpose of it was to make the song longer thus padding the album, but I think that was good enough of a build-up to half-warrant the length. When Barry White comes in with his vocals, hearing it is very welcome... and he's surprisingly singing a very catchy melody. The horn arrangements are just right. They liven up the song, but they're not overdone. That's a lovely Barry White song if there ever was one! His fans should hear it immediately!
The title track isn't bad, either, but the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear it is those huge '70s collars. That'll give you an idea of how dated it sounds! But it's a snappy song regardless. My biggest complaint about it, surprisingly, is Barry White's vocal performance. He's trying to sing higher than his God-given vocal range, pretending to sing something like James Brown. It doesn't really work. “Girl What's Your Name” is a passable love ballad with some nice arrangements involving super-cheesy clavichords and strings. But the one thing that plagues most Barry White song plagues that one terribly ... it just repeats too much. I mean, they don't even bother writing a chorus. Stuff like this makes me wonder why people ever thought to give him the nickname of “maestro.”
“I Can't Leave You Alone” was the probe for a disco hit, and it's ...... alright. As I said a number of times, I enjoy Barry White's dance songs more than his love ballads, and that's no exception. It's nothing more than aping the popular music of the times (there's even a “uh-huh, uh-huh” that was clipped right out of “That's the Way ------- I like it”). Actually, I like the melody, and the instrumentation is done pretty well. The instrumentation has a rich, organic flavor, and I like those horn arrangements.
Easily the smelliest turd that White lays is “Oh Me, Oh My (I'm Such a Lucky Guy).” Virtually nothing about that song is any good. White's vocals sound very slippery, which makes him seem like smarmy snake oil salesman. Making matters worse, the instrumentation is uncharacteristically bare. Eh, the instrumentalists probably had no interest, anyway, because the melody sucked anyway. A similar problem plagues “Once Upon a Time (You Were a Friend of Mine)” except I don't loathe that one. At least that corny chord progression had some potential to it... until, of course, he repeated it so much that he killed it.
“Call Me, Baby” was another song that started out well, but they murdered it in the end just to pad the album's running length. It seemed like they planned it for a perfectly good three-minute ditty, but the last five minutes are bloated and go nowhere. White was apparently tired that he even gave up singing...... I appreciate that they have unlimited love, but I don't have unlimited patience...
Read the track reviews:
I Love to Sing the Songs I Sing
The Message is Love (1979)
Album Score: 10
Barry White had switched labels at this point, which must've been a good idea. This is hardly improves Barry White's usual standard by leaps and bounds, but this is very clearly the best album he had ever released to this point. Someone, at the time of this recording, had some taste and must've discouraged White from going forth on all those tedious, 10-minute barf extravaganzas. Sure, with seven tracks at 35 minutes, most of these songs are still overextended... but they're not done to the point of torture. So, for not torturing me, I thank thee, Barry White! Naturally, White is still up to the same old formula. There's the disco dance songs and there's the romantic ballads. While very little of this inspired me, I gotta say one thing: This is actually pretty well done!
The two disco dance songs are unquestionably the highlights of this album and both are of exceptional quality. After all, nothing's better than a good, funky beat! The nicest thing about these disco songs is it favor organic instrumentation instead of those trashy synthesizers and sound effects that were characteristic of so many of these dance tracks from the era. These are unexpectedly tasteful little songs, and each have a catchy hook. One of these songs is the album opener, which is called “It Ain't Love, Babe.” (I know what you're thinking ... but there's no Bob Dylan connection as far as I can tell!) And it's very good! The arrangements include a very intricate percussion... the typical late '70s high-hats and snares... but there's bongos and cowbell. Incredibly well-orchestrated funk horns infuses the dance! The violins come in full bloom with the chorus, which surprisingly also contains a catchy melody. The other dance song is “Any Fool You See,” which shares much of the same qualities. It's a lesser song, though, because the hook isn't quite as infectious and it drags on for a little too long. Nonetheless, I like it!
The rest of the tracks are the love ballads, of course! I'm less interested in those, naturally, but none of these songs come off as corny whatsoever. Barry White's trademark bedroom mumbling is kept to a minimum, and surprisingly they are a little more reminiscent as poetry readings instead of that “hey baby, take off yer blouse!” dirty-old-man talk that he would frequently engaged in. The cream of the crop is undoubtedly “Love Ain't Easy.” Yes, it's a slow little ballad with the typical rhythms and the usual violins in the background. And yet, I enjoy listening to it! The instrumentation seems vibrant here instead of dreary, and I have some level of fondness for the melody. Perhaps the most striking thing about the song is that it has a lubby-dubby sax solo in the middle, and it is actually pretty good. It's nothing amazing, but it's melodic and far removed from that Kenny G crapola.
“I'm on Fire” starts like it's going to be one of the better ballads, but that song repeats so much that it becomes terribly stale. They tried a few things to freshen it up, notably a key change. Pop songs that like to repeat the same hooks over and over often resort to this “key change,” and it usually comes off as a cheap sort of cop-out for true development. The worst song is “You're the One I Need.” The instrumentation is bold enough to keep me mildly interested in it throughout its mercifully short four-minute running length, but the melody was sort of dead-in-the-water to begin with.
I enjoyed listening to The Message is Love more than I thought I would, so give them due credit for that! It was nearly an 11, but these song development issues reek too much of laziness that I won't push it that high. Their policy of repeating the same hooks over and over again until a fade-out is never interesting to me, and it never shall be! What they really ought to have done is work in new melodies, bolder harmonies and create some more varied textures and developments... Sure, that's nothing but an empty dream, but that means Barry White still had far to come to create a fully satisfying product... and that prospect is looking gloomier as the '80s approaches.
Read the track reviews:
The Message is Love
Sheet Music (1980)
Album Score: 11
I might be going senile, but this 1980 Barry White album is actually quite good. This was his second release with the new label, the debut album being The Message is Love, and they must have been treating White very, very well. While this music is done in the same style that he had been doing since his heyday, the production is actually very good. The string sections aren't that schmaltzy as they have been, and we can even find good horn arrangements strewn throughout the record. The rhythm sections are even very well-mixed! They're crunchy instead of tinny. And perhaps the biggest improvement of them all is the surprising lack of filler here. In fact, there is no filler. Sure, some of the songs are overextended with the unquestionable purpose to pad out the album, but they only start to get tired when they're almost through playing. Despite all my fears to the contrary, it seems that, for once, all the elements came together to finally help Barry White make the solid album! It was the impossible dream now fulfilled!
This was a bit of a commercial disappointment, though. You can imagine that White was already well-passed the peak of his popularity in 1980, and he didn't exactly gain enough willing followers to stay with him through the '80s. But I guess that's what happens when you're unwilling to change a dated formula!
So. The album begins with “Love Makin' Music,” which sees Barry White pandering to the least common denominator of his style. However, since he's pretty much always done that, we don't mind so much. What we do appreciate is the fact that the melody is catchy, more or less, and the song production keeps the experience relatively fresh. This lite-rock, smooth-soul style is indistinguishable from his heyday, but I suppose there are a few of his fans who can take some refuge in that. This isn't a terribly obscure song, though (I notice it's available on a few of his compilations). But it's usually not spoken in the same breath as his hits. Another song that deserves its place among his greatest hits is “Lady, Sweet Lady.” It's nothing more than an unpretentious funk-pop tune with ultra-polished instrumentation that feature White's silky smooth vocals at the height of their powers and a snappy melody to boot. It's nothing an average person has to go out of the way to hear, but it's a real treasure for his fans.
“Ghetto Letto” is sort of a dumb name, and I get a sort of perverse pleasure out of hearing these snippets of “jive talk” he inserts throughout, but the song itself is surprisingly pretty fun to hear. It's also different than most other White songs. That quiet, though percussive heavy groove is pretty convincing. It's a little like something we would have heard out of Stevie Wonder in the mid-'70s if only the melody was a little more infectious. The verses contain a sort of droning chant, while the chorus is soaring and catchy. That's an especially good example of what good production can do a song. Melodically it's mediocre, but crunchy groove turns it into a wholly enjoyable experience. Though perhaps the real shocker is “Rum and Coke.” Had you told me this album would have a quasi-electro Caribbean tune on it, I would have preemptively pumped out my stomach before hearing it to prevent myself from vomiting everywhere. But it's surprisingly tasteful, and even wholly likable! Considering I hate cheesy, pop-rock takes on Caribbean music, it's utterly shocking to hear that done well ...... on a Barry White album no less.
“Sheet Music” and “I Believe in Love” are of similar quality, but both of those extend past seven-minutes. They weren't so fantastic to begin with, but both of them were still pretty good. In fact, White doesn't completely lose me until the very end with “She's Everything to Me” when he resorts back to the thing I hate hearing him do the most: Mumble over his schmaltzy Love Unlimited Orchestra. However, it's not a true blemish, because it only lasts four minutes. Easy to ignore, right?
Despite this album's overall goodness, I will say that it does lack a *great* song. A surprising handful of them are excellent, but there's nothing here that packs the same punch as a his signature hits like “You’re the First, the Last, the Everything.” The melodies are overall formidable, but he would have had to put a little more hooks in them to incite me to hail this as anything more than a likable pop album. All things considered, I don't think this is worth going out of your way to hear unless you're a complete fan. And considering this album is pretty difficult to come by, there shouldn't be too many people interested in trying to track it down. But anyway, this is clearly the best thing he has ever done, so if you're going to listen to one Barry White album, make it this one.
Read the track reviews:
Sheet Music
Barry & Glodean (1981)
Album Score: 7
The astronomical progress Barry White had made on The Message is Love and Sheet Music had gone to pot. I can't say what happened to him, because I genuinely don't know. He either lost a producer, a co-writer or both. Whatever happened, it resulted in terrible songwriting and even worse song production. Unless you're some sort of fanatic (especially the mentally unstable kind), there is no reason for you to even bother seeking it out. It's currently not available on CD, so it won't be difficult avoiding the temptation! In fact, if you have a copy, sell it!! It's worth a bundle. Remember, the only people who would want to own this are mentally unstable, so they'll pay anything. To be fair, though, Barry White had a nice idea for the album at least. He wanted to make a duet album with his wife. She doesn't have a great voice, but it's capable enough. Besides, it might be interesting to hear what an actual woman has to say to all of his randy come-ons! Well, there's none of that, unfortunately. There should have been.
The best song of the album is the one that opens it, but I only like it for its camp value. This song, “Our Theme,” features these 'cosmic' sound effects amidst some of the usual Love-Unlimited-style orchestration while Barry and Glodean deliver William-Shatner-esque monologues about going out into space searching for the secrets of love. (I'm not kidding about that!!!) When I first put it on, I thought they were kidding, but seeing that Barry White has no sense of humor that we are aware of, they probably weren't.
Throughout the album, it's noticeable (but not painfully obvious) that Barry White has slowly started to adopt some '80s production trends. “You're the Only One For Me,” “We Can't Let Go of Love” and “You Make My Life Easy Livin'” have that drum machine sound. Although he hadn't quite gotten around to synthesizers yet (except for the intro to “You're the Only One For Me,” where he plays it briefly and abandons it as though he's afraid of it). Increased '80s-ness is not the reason the production has gotten a lot worse than Sheet Music... it would have been bad no matter what they did to it.
The use of the orchestra is generally very poor, and serves to make most of these songs sound more schmaltzy than they needed to be. The orchestration of “You” is so bad sometimes the band didn't even seem like they were playing together. It also didn't help that the songwriting was total crap... it was only a two-chord song with an incredibly choppy melody line. “This Love” has similar problems... it's basically just a two-chord song that has the annoying tendency to annoy the dickens out of me. It starts out OK for the first 10 seconds, but then it becomes painfully obvious that they weren't planning on going anywhere else with it. That song also makes me wonder why on earth Barry and Glodean weren't actually duetting. Through many of these songs, they were pretty much singing the same notes at the same time. (Of course, Barry sang an octave or two below his wife. She doesn't have a deep voice or anything.) I would think they would have wanted to try harmonizing a little bit ... or batting romantic lines back-and-forth... But there was very little of that going on. I'm really not sure what they were thinking about...
“Didn't We Make it Happen Baby” opens with Barry-White-style mumbling, except it's Glodean talking at first. ...I think she inadvertently made me appreciate her husband's mumbling! But that turns out to be the only actual good *song* on the album. It's instantly forgettable, but I'm generally liking it as I listen to it. The melody is nicer, and the two are actually duetting together for real. Schmaltzy, yes, but that's basically a non-issue, because anyone who wants to listen to Barry White probably likes schmaltz. As I already said, this album is currently unavailable on CD, but you can find it easier on vinyl. The only people who are going to buy it are pretty much nuts, anyway! But if you're going to go nuts trying to find these obscure Barry White albums, definitely search for Sheet Music and The Message is Love ... I wouldn't recommend that you get Barry and Glodean, because it's no good. But of course real music collectors don't listen to heeds like that. They have to hear the stuff for themselves. ...OK, but at least you won't be too devastated.
Read the track reviews:
Barry and Glodean
The Right Night & Barry White (1987)
Album Score: 7
It serves me right for reviewing albums out of order. I didn't do it on purpose; I just wasn't paying attention. A few days ago, I reviewed his 1989 album, The Man is Back!, which was an album that consisted of a number a nightmarish attempts to meld White's old '70s style with those terrible production techniques that were all the rage in the '80s. I called him Paula Abdul on male growth hormones. Of course, listening to this 1987 album isn't going to make that 1989 album any better, but it does put it in perspective a little bit. The first two tracks are actually good examples of what White-gone-'80s could be! ... Excuse me as I express some enthusiasm:
HOLY CRAP THE FIRST SONG IS PRETTY FREAKING GOOD! It's called “Good Dancin' Music,” and its title is surprisingly honest. The groove is perfectly danceable and shockingly not-too-dated-sounding for the 1980s. I mean, you still hear all those drum machines and programmed grooves, but it actually has a texture that interests me greatly. I mean, it's no masterpiece or anything, but this '80s dance song is actually tasteful. Factor in that the beginning of the song is surprisingly weird... sort of a mystical new-age thing where Barry White's chanting like a Buddhist monk. I like it!
The second track is also a bit of a surprise. You probably wouldn't have thought that an '80s dance-pop version of “As Time Goes By” would be any good, BUT HOW WRONG YOU WOULD BE! Listening to that song is a surprisingly happy experience. The groove is addictive and, again, surprisingly not as horribly dated as you might think it would be.
Naturally, I listened to these albums a few times before scoring the track reviews. After hearing those tracks for the first time, I prematurely thought that this might have been the classic Barry White album that I've been searching all my life for! But I was young and stupid. What started out as an incredibly enjoyable pop album ended up turning sour quickly. So, what ended up killing The Right Night & Barry White? It was the dang CD format.
I'll have you know that God did not create the CD format for pop stars to torture me. Just because the CD can fit 70-minutes worth of material in it doesn't mean you have to fill it. Barry White doesn't even write any new songs for it... There are 10 songs on here, which is perfectly standard for a pop album, BUT THEY ALL GO ON FOR AN AVERAGE OF SEVEN MINUTES. There was no good reason for that excessive length. For the most part, he just repeats the same old ideas the whole time, over and over again. It's a shame he did that, because most of this material would have made perfectly adequate three-minute love ditties!
In the end, I became so bored with The Right Night & Barry White that I think it messed up my brain. I'm only writing in complete sentences, because I edited them later. I promise you, you will hate eight of these ten songs. (That is, unless you use this music for what it was intended for ... that is, making sweet love.)
Read the track reviews:
The Right Night & Barry White
The Man is Back! (1989)
Album Score: 6
It's not that you were expecting much out of a 1989 Barry White album, right? Such a low rating shouldn't come to a surprise considering both the era and the artist. What else shouldn't come to a surprise to you is what this album actually sounds like. Yup. You guessed it. Like Paula Abdul after taking 50 doses of male growth hormones. But can Barry White dance? ... Probably not.
The Man is Back! is the sort of thing that's destined for $0.99 used CD bins... And if you're the sort of person who would buy such a $0.99 album, you'll probably discover that the CD case is more valuable as a coaster than the CD itself for music. This album is little more than a cash in... an attempt by White and the record companies to cash in on the name and '70s nostalgia. Those dance grooves sound like they came out of a cookie cutter. In this kingdom, non-originality rules.
And it doesn't stop there. I guess a Barry White album wouldn't be a Barry White album without the same old clichés. He even goes full-scale *retro* with the final two tracks, which don't contain any of those dated '80s sounds! (More about those later!) One cliché I actually welcome are those classic violin arrangements. They were much more full-bodied in his '70s albums and I assume those violins were real. These are obviously synthesizers, and they seem to have been played by a one-armed keyboardist. Nonetheless, they lend each of these songs a very needed texture.
However, the one cliché, throughout White's discography, that I hate the most is those terrible, terrible, terrible bedroom mumbling “conversations.” I lost count, but I believe he does this in five of these songs (and there's only nine). Given that it was probably against the law for White to release an album without at least one instance of bedroom talk, I think it's fair to say that doing it *this* much was a tad excessive.
I've done plenty of complaining about how much I dislike that horribly dated '80s sounds, it might shock you to note that some of those songs are actually the highlights of the albums! The final two tracks are direct copies of his '70s material, and they're utterly tedious. “Don't Let Go” is a whopping 10 minutes long, and sitting through it is akin to a torture chamber. (Forget waterboarding!) The closing track, “Loves Interlude / Goodnight My Love” is a little bit better because it's not so repetitive, but I'd rather forget I even listened to it.
I've been very negative in this review, and it's verrrrrry deserved. But wait a minute............... Behold! I am happy to report that despite this album being a miserable wreck, “L.A. Is My Kind of Town” might just be worth listening to. Perhaps it was an accident, but that's an instant when White's smooth, deep voice managed to meld quite well with the '80s sounds. Of course, that song would've been nothing without a melody, which had enough staying power to go quite strong through three of its five minutes. (It's officially stale for the final two minutes, but hardly tedious.) There, corporate bigwigs: chomp those cigars, shake hands and call it a job well done!
Read the track reviews:
The Man is Back!
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