I thank Eric Harvey for this ideal late afternoon bored-at-work exercise.
Four top Jam-Lewis productions
1. The S.O.S. Band – “Just Be Good to Me.” As much for allowing Mary Davis to simmer, caught between lust and masochism.
2. (tie) Alexander O’Neal – “Sunshine”; Human League – “Human”; Janet Jackson – “Come Back To Me”; and Ralph Tresvant – “Sensitivity.” Essentially they wrote the same ballad for four quite different artists but occupying a still center in the pools of Jam-Lewis’ rippling pools of keyboards — a phantom of domesticity and hearth fires burning that their singers never stop evoking.
3. Johnny Gill – “Rub You The Right Way.” It sweats, it struts, it strokes. Also rubs.
4. Janet Jackson – “Control.” Jackson could be a feeble vocalist but Jam-Lewis, working with their greatest muse, does a star turn that is the ne plus ultra of how to do an eighties production.
Though it doesn’t seem in the very least your thing, what would be your, um, Rushmore of walk-up music, were you a baseball player?
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