I can see the reasons why our love's alive

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

19/06/83 : In Your Eyes - George Benson

I'm expecting this to be some smooth, smooth soul balladry - not my thing at all, but a fine example of the thing nonetheless.

And oh yes, it's sweet, sweet soul indeed - George most definitely tells us it's the time he feels like making lurve.  I'd say it continues our 70s theme, but this sort of thing remained popular quite some way into the 80s - and you can hear the general vibe carried over into a lot of the stuff today, but it tends to be slightly more explicit about what it wants to do these days.  Having said that it's not my thing at all, I have to admit the title track is so well done that I couldn't help but sing along - you were lucky you were spared that.  And the rest of it is obviously well put-together - I admire it, even if I don't actually like it.  Or own it - 9/28.

We're at #4 again this week in his third week out of a 38 week run - he dropped out for two weeks and then had another 14 weeks.  And then he managed one more week before disappearing entirely in June '84.  Above it in the charts were (for a change) The Police (a new entry at #1), Michael Jackson and David Bowie - the next highest new entry was Altered Images at #18 (awww - it might have been cool/amusing to listen to that).

Wikipedia has four sentences on the album, which somewhat surprised me - so to make up for it I checked out his entry and it's safe to say the man's had a long career.  He started with The Jack MacDuff Quartet in the mid 60s, had a #1 US album in the 70s, has won 11 Grammys and is still hanging around doing the odd thing even now at the tender age of 79.  He's also been married to the same woman for 60 years and has seven kids - fair play to the lad.  He also (and I never knew this) recorded the original version of "The Greatest Love Of All" (for a Muhammad Ali biopic, apparently) which was then made somewhat more famous by Whitney.  Back to the album, it did surprisingly better over here (peaking at #3) than in the US (#27).

"Customers also listened to" Al Jarreau, Aretha Franklin and Quincy Jones - I was quite surprised not to see Luther Vandross on the list as well.  All of which (with the exception of Aretha, of course) really isn't my kind of thing, but I can still admire the work that went into producing a quality result even if it does feel somewhat outdated these days.

12/06/83 - Fine, but pointless.  And a complete lie.
26/06/83 - 1973 or 1983?