This Is Your Life
Commodores
Caught In The Act, 1975
I had to take it back to the shag carpet classics this week. This is the Lionel Richie ballad that started it all. The Commodores first album was basically all uptempo funk. This album, their second, is mostly funk as well, “Slippery When Wet” was a #1 R&B hit, and although this song didn’t do as well, it clearly outclasses the other ballad that was written by the whole group. There are exceptions, but it wouldn’t unfair to generalize and say that each album after this featured (at least) one Lionel Richie-penned ballad which was the biggest hit and that the songs got progressively more mainstream (”Easy” (Like Sunday Morning), “Three Times a Lady” and country-goodness of “Sail On”). This of course, lead up to his leaving the group to pursue his very pop-friendly solo career.
But that’s not the part worth dwelling on. The first few ballads are so good! I couldn’t decide to whether to post this or “Just To Be Close To You” (and let’s not forget about “Sweet Love”). I like this song more, but Lionel’s preacher-ish spoken intro on “Just To Be Close To You” (”I found that material things…I thought had so much val-ya [value], did really have any val-ya at all…”) is slightly shocking if you don’t already know it. When I realized this is song didn’t make the “The Best Of The Commodores, The Millennium Collection” and that their 1978 Greatest Hits only has the radio edit with 2:29 of the song cut off, that made my mind up for me.
>> songs are available for two weeks (192 kbps) [8.2 MB]
>> songs are available for two weeks (320 kbps) [13.5 MB]
