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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: Infatueighties

  • Infatueighties: “Tender Love”

    It’s safe to say that Janet Jackson and her production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis rode one another to the top of the charts with 1986’s Control. Janet went from Michael’s cute little sister to Madonna’s counterpart, while artists from The Human League to New Edition clamored to work with the former members of The Time.

    However, Jam & Lewis were on their way to building quite the impressive resume at that point,having already scored huge R&B hits on Cheryl Lynn (Encore) and The S.O.S. Band (Just Be Good To Me). A couple of months before Control’s first single, What Have You Done For Me Lately, became a Top 5 smash, the production duo scored their first Top 10 pop single with Tender Love by the Force MD’s (also featured in the film Krush Groove).

    The MD’s were a group of kids who were discovered singing aboard New York’s Staten Island Ferry. Their sound mixed doo-wop harmonies with hip-hop rhythms damn near a decade before Boyz II Men blew up. Tender Love, quite simply, is one of the most simple, elegant and beautiful ballads of the Eighties. In contrast to Jam & Lewis’s generally noisy production style, this song is pretty much just electric piano, synthesized strings and voice.

    While The Force MD’s were definitely more talented vocalists than their counterparts New Edition, they had the misfortune of having primarily hip-hop & dance label Tommy Boy behind them, so they were never given the quality material or the promotion that N.E. ultimately got. Tender Love was the group’s only Top 40 pop record, although they scored a few hits, including 1987’s #1 R&B charting Love is a House.

    Sadly, two of the Force MD’s original five members have since passed away way too soon (“Mercury” from a heart attack and lead singer “T.C.D” from Lou Gehrig’s disease), but this song leaves a hell of a legacy. It’s been covered by artists ranging from Alicia Keys and Kelly Rowland to Jordan Knight, but no one can ever top the original.

    This YouTube clip cuts out the song’s intro, but the only other option appeared to be a mega-fuzzy TV performance. Oh well.

  • Infatueighties: “Yah Mo B There”

    Chances are, if you were anywhere near a radio station from roughly 1980-1987, within thirty minutes you’d hear something from either James Ingram or Michael McDonald. The two Midwestern guys (Ingram was from Akron, OH while McDonald repped St. Louis) were very fond of the duet and/or the background support vocal, and their list of collaborators reads like a laundry list of Eighties hitmakers: Michael Jackson, Shalamar, Kenny Loggins, Donna Summer, Kenny Rogers, Kim Carnes, Nicolette Larson, Linda Ronstadt, Patti Austin, Anita Baker and Toto, just to name a few. It was inevitable that the two would eventually collaborate.

     

    Actually, it wasn’t that eventual. “Yah Mo B There” was the second single from Ingram’s debut solo album “It’s Your Night”. Of course, Ingram was already a Grammy winning success story at that point, due to “Just Once” and “One Hundred Ways”, his featured spots on Quincy Jones’ “The Dude” album. McDonald was only a year or so removed from his lead singer’s spot in the Doobie Brothers and had only released his own debut solo album a few months before. The result was a smash: “Yah Mo B There” reached the Top 15 on the pop charts, Top 5 R&B, and won the pair a Grammy for “Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group”. It was Ingram’s third Grammy as a solo artist, McDonald’s second.

    The song itself screams “Eighties”, with a hypnotic, synthesized beat. Rod Temperton, the former Heatwave member who wrote many of The King of Pop’s biggest hits, co-penned this track, while the legendary Quincy Jones produced.  Both men were at this time riding high off the success of “Thriller” (in which Ingram was also a participant, having co-written “P.Y.T”. Thematically, it comes thisclose to being gospel. “Yah”, of course, being shorthand for “Yahweh”. Ingram purposefully fudged with the spelling of the title phrase so as not to scare off pop listeners from it’s fairly explicity spiritual message.

    One person they definitely didn’t scare off was me. Ingram and McDonald both give phenomenal performances, full of passion. They’ve not always given themselves the best material, but they scored here. Over twenty years later, this song still moves me. Not to sermonize at all, but even as an occasionally lapsed Catholic (maybe even more because of that) this song’s message resonates with me especially when I’m going through dark patches. Both the song and it’s video make clear that there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

    Although this video version is of a slightly inferior remix (what’s up with the percussion tracks?), the power of the song’s message rings as clear as the voices that sing it. Well, maybe those voices aren’t so clear. I can never figure out what the men are singing after they vocalize the title (folks say it’s “up and over”, but it sure doesn’t sound like it)