Saturday, September 10, 2011

The Last Of The Great Loggins/McDonald Collaborations



As a kid I always wondered why all these Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins songs sounded so similar to each other, and then one day, a couple of years ago, I finally found out why: because they were all secretly written together by Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins!

Although not featured in Yacht Rock, "Heart To Heart" was a cherished track on my '80s Tape (sadly, McDonald doesn't sing backing vocals, but he apparently plays keyboard), and I am not the only one who fell for the tune's sultry spell. In Stephen Thomas Erlewine's review of Loggins' 1982 album High Adventure, he writes that "Heart To Heart" is "the second of two pop classics Loggins cut as a solo artist" (the other being "This Is It," which he praises in an earlier review). "Here, he has a great mid-tempo groove, a good lyric and an indelible melody that is soft rock at its finest." Erlewine goes on to admit that "the rest of the album may not match this height -- most of the genre didn't..."

Ah, but Loggins would soon reach heights of a different, more hard-rocking kind.

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