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"Thunder in My Heart" and "Easy to Love" barely nicked the Top 40, and of his eight chart hits from 1975 to 1981, these two were the weakest, but this disco album by the quirky singer, once again produced by Richard Perry, is listenable and has more than its share of good players. Olivia Newton-John songwriter Tom Snow co-wrote the title track with Sayer, while Albert Hammond helped out on the second song and follow-up hit. Half of the ten songs are Snow co-writes, with Hammond, Michael Omartian, Bruce Roberts, and others all contributing. The second Hammond/Sayer title, "I Want You Back," is a pleasant album track, but with Omartian on piano, Jeff Porcaro on drums, and Larry Carlton on guitar, Perry could just put the session on automatic pilot. The album needs a jolt somewhere and it doesn't kick in; Sayer tries finding some middle ground while trying to make the transition to Engelbert Humperdinck, but actually comes off like a low-key guy version of Donna Summer. (That might sound more abysmal on paper than the album is.) It is quite polite, perhaps just a little too trendy to have the staying power necessary for this British TV host to make a real musical impact with it. Bowie he's not, nor is he as sincere here as the aforementioned Hammond. Ray Parker adds guitar to "It's Over" and James Newton Howard puts the synthesizers where they belong. The music on side two, from "Fool for Your Love" to "We Can Start It All Over Again," is more of the same highly listenable but disposable pop music. Thunder in My Heart is an album you want to like more than it lets you. https://www.allmusic.com/album/thunder-in-my-heart-mw0000462377

 

 

Just a Boy Review by Joe Viglione [-]
Before Richard Perry took Leo Sayer to the top of the charts in 1976 and 1977, his former bandmate and sometimes songwriting partner David Courtney provided all the music to Sayer's lyrics here and co-produced with manager Adam Faith 1974's Just a Boy album, featuring the Top Ten 1975 hit "Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance)." Leo Sayer had a geeky appearance on this album cover, as well as on the Endless Flight and Here albums, though he got trendy during the disco of Thunder in My Heart. Just a Boy lacks the gloss and sophistication of the later releases, including the Courtney-produced Here in 1979, but a break-up song like "When I Came Home This Morning" has naïve charm and shows the potential. The underproduction actually adds to the aura of the singer/songwriter persona, and one can see why Three Dog Night chose "The Show Must Go On" from his Silverbird disc, hitting a year before "Long Tall Glasses" from this fine effort. "One Man Band" is not the same composition as Three Dog Night's 1970s hit, but it rocks, two sets of musicians providing the accompaniment, with different personalities coming in to add their flavors, like Keith Nelson's banjo on "Long Tall Glasses" which supplements Paul Keogh's slide guitarwork. "Another Time" features songwriter/co-producer Courtney on piano, as does "Giving It All Away" and "Telepath." Sayer's vocals also have a warmth and intensity that don't reflect the image he portrays in the smiling/laughing Terry O'Neill back cover photos, or Humphrey Butler-Bowden's interesting cover painting. With all his own success on the charts, interaction with other stars, and visibility as a hit songwriter for others, it is interesting that some of the fine work here wasn't picked up by more of the '70s artists who were in need of hits. Where Neil Sedaka's catalog got a good going over, a beautiful song like "Solo" is here in these grooves with its musical references to both "The Show Must Go On" and "Long Tall Glasses." A better production and different take on the ideas might have been a Godsend for those artists in need. Just a Boy maintains a good feel throughout and is a very entertaining set of performances. https://www.allmusic.com/album/just-a-boy-mw0000221888

 

 

 

Endless Flight Review by Joe Viglione [-]
Richard Perry's production on Endless Flight, coupled with the tremendous song selection, makes it superior to the 1977 follow-up, Thunder in My Heart (also produced by Perry, but with not as much heart), with this project remaining big through most of that same year. The two number one hits, a catchy Vini Poncia/Leo Sayer co-write, "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing," and a cover of the title track to Albert Hammond's 1976 disc, When I Need You, are essential career components that sound great years later. It's amazing how much more substantial this album is over the somewhat contrived Thunder in My Heart which followed. Opening the disc with a Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil/Leo Sayer song like "Hold on to My Love" is how to get yourself into the history books before the record is even out of the box. The Barry Mann/Leo Sayer composition "How Much Love" on side two was the third chart single, going a bit beyond the Top 20 in the U.S. With strings arranged by Gene Page, Ray Parker on guitar, and Steve Gadd on drums, Sayer had a leg up on the competition. There's a cool photo of the tall Richard Perry walking down the street with the smaller-framed Sayer, and their working relationship reached its commercial zenith here. Willie Weeks provided the bass to "When I Need You" with Jeff Porcaro on drums, David Bowie's guitarist Earl Slick on guitar, and Michael Omartian and James Newton Howard on keys (Omartian and Larry Carlton both show up on Albert Hammond recordings as well); it's perfect musicianship and perfect timing for this most artistic project by Sayer. The title track, written by Andrew Gold, is a standout, featuring Nigel Olsson on drums and Paul Buckmaster on strings, both borrowed from Elton John's camp. As this writer has stated about Albert Hammond, the same holds true for Leo Sayer; both these artists could have challenged Elton John for chart dominance had they put as much into all their albums as Hammond did with It Never Rains in Southern California and as Richard Perry and Leo Sayer put into Endless Flight. Covers of Danny O'Keefe's "Magdalena" and the Supremes' "Reflections" embellish the album chock-full of hits, a stirring title track, and superb musicianship. It's a career album with lots to offer the world. https://www.allmusic.com/album/endless-flight-mw0000199631  

 

Eponymous

Leo Sayer Review by Joe Viglione [-]
Richard Perry's 1978 production of the self-titled Leo Sayer album is one of the artist's most serious and heartfelt, though it only generated a minor hit in the cover of the Boudleau Bryant/Felice Bryant tune "Raining in My Heart." With Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham on electric guitar, Waddy Wachtel on slide guitar, and Ben Benay on acoustic, the performance and production of that particular song offers much on an album that is equally impressive. James Brown/Russell Smith's "Dancing the Night Away," with David Lindley's important and unobtrusive fiddle and steel guitar, and "Stormy Weather," the Tom Snow/Leo Sayer collaboration which opens the album, all work in unison, providing evidence that Sayer had superstardom just within his grasp. It's also interesting to note the recurring themes, from the previous album's "Thunder in My Heart" hit single to this album's "Raining in My Heart," or the aforementioned "Dancing the Night Away" as a loose sequel to his first number one hit, "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing." Perry's production is perfect, and it's interesting to note that the engineer here, Bill Schnee, wasn't able to give Kiki Dee the same finesse for her Stay With Me album which he produced this same year, with some of the same musicians, like Jeff Porcaro, Steve Lukather, Tom Snow, James Newton Howard (Sayer's musical director), David Paich, Davey Johnstone...that's a lot of overlap on two distinctly different albums. Lindsey Buckingham plays acoustic guitar and provides backing vocals with Sayer on the cover of Jackson Browne's "Something Fine" and stays on board for the next number, a Tom Snow co-write with Johnny Vastano that is "Running to My Freedom." This musical composite should have been dynamite on the charts, the soulful vocals adding to the style of music the Eagles, Jackson Browne, and Fleetwood Mac were all so successful with at this point in time. Perhaps the straying from the style he was so comfortable with on the previous outing hurt Sayer at radio. Ray Parker, Jr. co-writes "Frankie Lee" with Sayer, and it's some strange folk/funk combo which, like the Thunder in My Heart album, is a diversion which throws the listener. Two Tom Snow/Leo Sayer compositions end this unique snapshot, the harder-rocking "Don't Look Away" and the closing ballad "No Looking Back." The artist would look back as David Courtney came back to produce 1979's Here, and in 1980, Sayer would achieve chart success again with the Alan Tarney-produced Living in a Fantasy, but this Richard Perry/Leo Sayer combination was a very worthwhile venture, and this album is one of the artist's most respectable in a large body of good work. https://www.allmusic.com/album/leo-sayer-mw0000768274

 

 Here Review by Joe Viglione [-]
Reunited with David Courtney, the producer of his first American hit "Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance)" from 1975's Just A Boy LP, Leo Sayer's first album after three with Richard Perry yielded no significant hits in America but is a refined and entertaining chapter in the minstrel's history. There are two co-writes with Courtney, one with Ray Parker, Jr. who racked up 13 hits of his own between 1978 and 1990, a version of Al Kooper's "Lost Control" with Kooper on organ and synths, and one of the most telling tracks, a nice remake of the Chi Lites' 1972 number one hit "Oh Girl." This is notable because most of Sayer's material is usually original work written by him or his colleagues, relatively unknown titles, with the exception of the Supremes' "Reflections" on Endless Flight from 1976, and his minor hit with the 1959 composition by Felice Bryant and Boudleaux Bryant, "Raining in My Heart," off of 1978's Leo Sayer. Sayer had gotten into a good groove as an interpreter and may have benefited by resurrecting other more popular titles. The focus seems to have been on his songwriting or picking new material, and while his collaboration on "Work" with Johnny Vastano and Tom Snow has a Rod Stewart kind of feel, especially with Duck Dunn and Steve Cropper sitting in, it is still the Chi Lites cover which emerges as the gem on this interesting departure from Richard Perry's counsel. The eerie reggae of "Ghosts" is interesting, but like "Who Will the Next Fool Be" and "The World Has Changed," these songs were not going to shake up the Top 40. "Takin' the Easy Way Out" is like a nice Elton John-style album track, and it may have influenced Elton's '80s work, that artist having made it clear he absorbs all the pop music around him before going into his creative mode. With the Phil Spector sheen that influenced Billy Joel and Eddie Money, "Takin' the Easy Way Out" is a perfect closer and might have become a Leo Sayer staple had FM radio stayed progressive. Alas, a very musical departure like this is artistically fulfilling, David Courtney letting the Just a Boy concept grow up with more polished sounds and legends like Al Kooper adding a touch of class to the proceedings, but invariably it was not the avenue for this hit artist to take at this critical juncture. Enough of a Top 40 legacy was not generated at this point in time to suggest this act moving to the album market. Here remains a quality product that has been largely forgotten over the years.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/here-mw0000380366

 

 

Living in a Fantasy Review by Joe Viglione [-]
Living in a Fantasy is the last album to yield hits for Leo Sayer in America, closing out the terrific '70s run as the '80s began. A-ha/Bow Wow Wow/Squeeze producer Alan Tarney chooses to keep the production slick and sparse, the large mix of musicians who helped craft albums like Thunder In My Heart, Endless Flight, Here, World Radio, and others vanishes as the singer goes back to the pared-down format of his Just a Boy period. The big difference is that Sayer had gone beyond the singer/songwriter personality of those early recordings to having marquee value, as well as his own TV show. Songs here like "You Win, I Lose are bouncy pop, this one like five others composed by the singer and his producer. Tarney does three other songs on his own, with the Curtis/Allison number "More Than I Can Say" the only material from another source. That song would climb to number one on the U.S. adult contemporary charts, almost doing the same on the Top 40, stopping one shy of becoming his third number one record. The production of the hit is elegant and polished, sounding a bit like "Raining in My Heart" from the Leo Sayer disc, which should have been as big as this. The Hipgnosis sleeve design and multiple collages are all very hip, and give this techno-looking record a clarity missing from much of the previous packaging. "Millionaire" could be Gino Vanelli gone total pop, slick and stripped-down dance rock that could have hit the clubs easier than the forced feel of the Thunder in My Heart album. Tarney is careful to keep the stylish density of Richard Perry's work involved here. "Once in a While" benefits from the mixture of middle-of-the-road melody meeting trendy sounds. The title track, "Living in a Fantasy," also has those qualities and was the last hit, just breaking the Top 25 in 1981. "She's Not Coming Back," and "Only Foolin' are slick entries that work while Alan Tarney's "Let Me Know" is very strong, not only as a song but as a production and performance. Definitely a satisfying project by the character who brought some unique and clever music to radio. https://www.allmusic.com/album/living-in-a-fantasy-mw0000467476

 

 

 

World Radio Review by Joe Viglione [-]
Arif Mardin's production of Leo Sayer on World Radio is a bit much, and though the record has lots to offer, it gets lost in the translation. Released a year-and-a-half to two years after Living in a Fantasy, the lag time was too much space in between releases as the artist had just bounced back to serious chart action after a previous two-year Top 40 absence, and the failure of the albums Leo Sayer and Here, to generate any more than a minor hit. The Bee Gees' composition "Heart (Stop Beating in Time)" has the hooks, but Mardin doesn't drench the song in the sweetness that helped Dionne Warwick, Samantha Sang, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Frankie Valli, Barbara Streisand, Rare Earth, and others artists ride the Bee Gees' magical '70s gravy train. Clearly, Barry Gibb, Albhy Galuten, and Karl Richardson had a clue about bringing songs into the Top 40, especially their own titles. Alan Tarney's production of the Living in a Fantasy album put the artist back on track after David Courtney couldn't recapture the magic of Just a Boy. Here, Arif Mardin actually revives the failed approach of the Thunder in My Heart period, and though "Paris Dies in the Morning" and "Have You Ever Been in Love?" fare well, the potential hits that are "Rumors" and the first of four Courtney/Sayer co-writes, "Heroes," both miss the mark slightly. Also after the stripped-down three/four-piece band that made Living in a Fantasy so compact, it is back to the previous Sayer formula of utilizing the fleet of top-flight session musicians, Jeff Porcaro, Steve Luthaker, Mike Boddicker, Will Lee, Robbie Buchanan, and the rest. "Heroes" is a real heartbreaker because everything is there; the mix just doesn't do the song and performance justice. In early 1982, the squeezing of the sounds into some cardboard container just didn't bring out the best in a tune the way Sayer's rendition of Albert Hammond's "When I Need You" can still sparkle on radio decades later. That's when Richard Perry was in control of the situation. Mardin is a tremendous producer with tremendous credentials, but this album and the Looking Glass follow-up to the album with "Brandy," Subway Serenade, aren't the best Mardin had to offer. While "Have You Ever Been in Love" shimmers with good production values, "Paris Dies in the Morning" sounds like the Buggles, and the title track ends up resembling Klaatu. The sounds are well-crafted, but the wisdom of stretching to these specific musical bags was questionable. This was five years after the Carpenters wisely sweetened up "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" enough to get it into the Top 40, and during the time the Cars had serious album tracks like "Movin' in Stereo" and the techno rock which made up Panorama. World Radio falls somewhere between those two ideals, a hipper image for the singer/songwriter on the album cover isn't as inviting as the cool Cars mode of the Living in a Fantasy album. Sayer needed to follow up that previous disc sooner with as much enthusiasm as Ric Ocasek attacked rock radio. And the real key here was the failure to embellish the Bee Gees title, "Heart (Stop Beating in Time)" and make it a popular song. A slick cover of Bruce Cockburn's "Wondering Where the Lions Are" and the very Genesis-sounding Courtney/Sayer "The End of the Game" are substantial efforts but too far removed from the arena that brought this artist his popularity. Like Here, World Radio is a musical album and a nice addition to the Leo Sayer catalog for his hardcore fans. All it needed was some production from the Bee Gees themselves to launch it into history. https://www.allmusic.com/album/world-radio-mw0000847628