Barry Manilow
Manilow fans will find some of their favorites of recent years on this album. There are eight recycled hits, including The Old Songs, Let's Hang On, the by-now-overburdened Memory and Somewhere Down the Road, the Tom Snow-Cynthia Weil tune that was a little more than the usual Manilow mash of histrionics and hyperarranging. But the LP also bears three brand-new songs. One is standard banal Barry stuff, You're Lookin' Hot Tonight ("I don't believe my eyes, what have I seen/Looking like you walked out of a magazine"). On Put a Quarter in the Jukebox, though, he teams with country crooner Ronnie Milsap for what is if nothing else a different sound; the two do manage at times to sound more or less like a couple of buddies in a bar. And Read 'Em and Weep is another long, involved track by Jim (Total Eclipse of the Heart) Steinman, the kind of song that makes a virtue of Manilow's style. Arista Records seems mostly, though, to be trying to snare hard-core Manilow fans who already have his big hits by adding a little new material to this set. That seems a little bit like a cheat.
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