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Avg. Rating: 3.54
Sheena gets the job done!
An outstanding album. Track by track, miss Easton shows us exactly what an underrated vocalist she is. "No Deposit.." is a driving, funky dance tune, whereas "The Lover In Me" is similar, but more pop. "Follow My Rainbow" is a classic Babyface ballad, then "Without You" is an excellent Angela Winbush upbeat ballad, followed by "If It's Meant To Last" which is definitely a shoulda-been hit. Just hear this once and try not to hum the tune. The second half begins with a really classic LA&Babyface tune, "Days Like This" which is then followed by probably the only weak track on the album, "One Love". It's OK, just a bit formulaic. Then come the two Prince tracks. "101" is easily a lost classic. The inventiveness with which Sheena sings the song is amazing. You can really feel her pining for her lover to come back. This is followed by "Cool Love", a great quirky Prince track, again allowing Sheena to really show us what she's made of. The concluding track is a great chill-out ballad called "Fire And Rain", again from the pen of Angela Winbush. All in all this album is a real lost classic.
First-Rate 'Lover'
Possessed of one of the more glorious voices in pop music during the '80s, Sheena Easton was coming off the disappointment of her underwhelming, though musically solid,DO YOU album(as well as lack of release in the states of her NO SOUND BUT A HEART project) when she signed with a new label and released what remains her creative benchmark, THE LOVER IN ME. Beautifully melding pop, R&B, funk, and adult contemporary, it remains her most musically diverse and fully realized project thirteen years later. L.A. and Babyface, in the middle of one of their most successful periods, produced half the album, chief among those tracks being the title cut, as well as 'Days Like This' and 'No Deposit,No Return'. Angela Winbush provides the utterly beautiful 'Without You', as well as one of Easton's most R&B-oriented tracks ever in 'Fire And Rain'. The standout though is the Prince-produced '101', a stunning pop-funk workout that exquisitely showcases Easton's vocal range and remains a creative watermark in her career--it should have been a huge hit. Unfortunately, her record label was MCA, which in case you don't know, ruins careers(see the equally career-maligned Belinda Carlisle and Pebbles for further proof). This should have been a massive crossover album, rather than the mild success it ended up being.
Give it a listen
Fire&Rain is as good as a R&B soul ballad gets. Angela Winbush produced this cd and it gets as much soul as you can get out of Sheena Easton. Not a bad cd.
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