What's there to say - there's not much to talk about

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

28/02/88 : Give Me The Reason - Luther Vandross


Our second visit with Luther - I think we pretty much know what to expect here. Somewhat bizarrely, it's not available on Amazon but YouTube rode to the rescue.

Yeah, this is very much what you'd expect - it's not my sort of thing, but I have to admit he does it well and he's got a lovely voice. I was surprised to actually remember the title track and "I Really Didn't Mean It" so he obviously stuck in there more than I was expecting. I didn't like his version of "Anyone Who Had A Heart" though, even if I have to admit he does it well in a Luther stylee. And if you're in the market for such a thing, then there are far worse examples out there than this album - high praise from me indeed!

We're at #3 in the charts this week on his FIFTH EIGHTH week of an EIGHTY EIGHT week run - and this was its second run! It was released in late '86 and had an initial ten week run which could quite easily have been it, but somehow it got a second life and ran with it, charting for most of '87 and '88 with this being as high as it got. The rest of the top five were Terence Trent D'Arby, T'Pau, Wet Wet Wet and Rick Astley with the next highest new entry being Zodiac Mindwarp And The Love Reaction (#20) - they were certainly something back in the day! Somewhat surprisingly, Zodiac is still with us and loads of his paintings have been bought by Damien Hirst, with Rupert The Bear featuring heavily in them (you expected that, right?).

Wikipedia tells us this is fifth album - the only other fact of interest is that he's thinner on this album than the old chunky Luther who appeared on his last album. The other thing I noticed is that of the thirteen additional singers that appear on this album, ten of them have their own Wikipedia entry so the man really had a pool of talent to draw upon - he did the hard yards as a session singer in the 70s so fair play to him. Critically, the reviews were somewhat mixed and commercially, it "only" got to #14 in the US but it sold over two million copies there (and it sold over half a million here as well) - interestingly, there's no word on it doing absolutely anything anywhere else, but I suspect this is merely an omission on Wikipedia's part.

Somewhat unusually (particularly for an album that sold so many copies), discogs.com only has four copies for sale so you can spend between £8 and £17 but that's your lot. Whatever your musical inclinations, there's no denying that Luther had a top notch voice and he did what he did well (and it's weird that he died 20 years ago) and this album feels like a decent example of his craft.

21/02/88 - A most peculiar album
06/03/88 - Not for everyone, but I liked it

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