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Old 09-19-2020, 10:26 AM
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aleuzzi aleuzzi is offline
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Originally Posted by jbrownsjr View Post
Strangely, I forgot they didn't really promote Mystery either. Agreed, by Heroes, Christine's song were fantastic. The title track is not lazy songwriting by any stretch.
I love the title tune. Her vocals are fantastic on it, too. I would have preferred an organ instead of the lightweight horns, but otherwise the song is really pleasurable. Its production is dated, as it is on her other HEROES songs. The band were clearly trying to get themselves on the radio by using industry-standard arrangement gimmicks—horns, strings, pedal steel. But the songs are are super strong, Christine’s in particular.

Interesting note: people often cite “You Make Loving Fun” as the first of many FM songs to feature a thick layering of background voices, but it’s actually on the Heroes title tune where multi-layered background vocals were first featured as counterpoint to the melody and lead vocal. If you listen to those background vocals, they tell you that Christine didn’t need Lindsey to teach her how to build a wall of sound from multi-tracked vocals. She and Bob had already figured that out.

“Night Watch” has fantastic harmonies, too, but those are CSNY-inspired block harmonies, not counterpointed.

Last edited by aleuzzi; 09-20-2020 at 08:16 PM..
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