Here we have two of the biz' primo canaries coming up with long-awaited (and, you can bet, carefully considered) albums and not exactly setting the charts on fire. Both Ross and Newton-John are selling themselves as hot-blooded pinups proudly past the innocent age (playing up your maturity is not only sound politics but also sound business, as Tina Turner proves). And both have come up with good-to-excellent records.
Ross' album was produced by Barry Gibb and Company, with unhelpful help on the first single from Michael Jackson. He cowrote and coproduced the duet "Eaten Alive," certainly his worst effort since "Muscles." But then Diana gets down to the rest of the album, a brilliant
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Gibb-brothers confection. The good news, for those forced to endure "Swept Away," her Daryl Hall-Arthur Baker collaboration, is that the Miami guys didn't let Ross sing any of the lousy notes that marred that record. Better news is that Barry Gibb and his brothers have turned in a record that is as deep and intelligently crafted as their minor masterpieces for Dionne Warwick and Barbra Streisand.
As it happens, the relative neutrality of Ross' instrument makes her an ideal vehicle for the Gibbs' boudoir swish of sound. Layers of transparent voices and instruments veil and reveal the star, on flawless ballads like "Experience" and "I'm Watching You" and on "Chain Reaction," with its ingeniously moody whiff of the Supremes. Ross' album isn't a hit, one associate told me, because the whole package – Diana, the Bee Gees and the album – is square. I choose to believe it's not a hit because of a poor first single. If this pinnacle of popcraft is square, what's the latest Heart album? Cubic?
After a long period of corporate fine tuning, MCA released Olivia's Soul Kiss with a kinky Helmut Newton cover, a lean John Farrar production and a fun single, the album's title track. Originally (and wisely) passed on by Tina Turner, "Soul Kiss" is just right for Newton-John. She proves once again that she is the best pure pop singer working today. Check her out live sometime, mark her for range, pitch, phrasing, energy, ballsiness and, yes, commitment to the songs, and see if you don't agree.
Too bad the rest of the material doesn't match up. There are good songs, but no other bull's-eyes, and a pair of embarrassments. "Queen of the Publication" is a Livvy-as-crack-journalist fantasy that would have worked better as the storyboard to a feminine-deodorant commercial. In "Culture Shock" Newton-John asks her hurt beau if her other beau can move in with them. It's a male pipe dream in which nothing but the pronouns have been changed.
Olivia, like Diana, may be cut wrong for this week's pop meat rack, and maybe for next week's too. If that's so, the fault lies with wardrobe and one or two ill-chosen songs. Both have much to offer as performers, and both are making records with at least as much modern surface and pace as A-ha or S
