First Hit #1: January 5, 1980
It’s the 80’s! Barriers are breaking down, pop music is getting shifted around, everything’s changing! As proof, here’s KC and the Sunshine Band, doing soft rock, albeit soft rock with a really annoying synthesizer in there for some reason. It’s a different sound for the group, and I’m going to admit I’m not sure it works. The group just isn’t comfortable doing something that isn’t upbeat and fun, and it really comes through in the song. The singing is kind of rough, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s the arrangement that makes me wonder about the band’s enthusiasm for this song. You have that annoying synthesizer, space laserin’ it up while everyone waits to throw an explosion of instruments on the track. It’s just kind of uncomfortable, a change in direction that nobody really wanted to take. It’s a disco group that’s in a world that’s less hospitable to disco groups, begrudgingly trying something else.
A standard mid-70s soft rock track whose mournful title encapsulates the lyrical theme. The vocals are double tracked to hide how weak the vocalist is at the top of his range.