Air Supply
Yours Truly
Reprise
One bar of “All Out of Love” and it’s stuck in your head for days, eating away at your sanity and convincing you to buy little heart-shaped boxes and write love notes to your exes. Air Supply have furnished listeners with crooning love songs and soft rock hits since 1975, and after their last release in 1996, they’re back with Yours Truly. Much like other aging stars such as Rod Stewart, Madonna, and The Rolling Stones, they have decided it’s time for a little musical redecorating. Incorporating “techno,” “playfully erotic lyrics,” and Indian vocal star Mehnaz, they attempt the impossible. A rat that wishes to be a turtle can live in a sewer but he cannot, no matter how hard he tries, grow a shell. Air Supply does ballads. They create sappy music that only people in love can truly appreciate, and they’re not so bad at it. However, they are not a boy band, nor a pair of DJs. It’s great that artists are exploring avenues never before considered, but you have to draw a line somewhere, which seems to be the one thing Air Supply forgot to do on Yours Truly. Die-hard Air Supply fans will love this release, because even though they make it out to be that they have completely reinvented themselves, only about four of the 13 tracks are “exploratory.” That’s right, the other nine tracks are jam packed with lovey lyrics and sweet music perfect for not only the aging lovers out there, but also for those of us who almost thought we didn’t have reason enough to not own an Air Supply album. Regardless, it should be enough that they are still making music, even if the whole reinvention thing was indeed not such a great move.
Reprise Records, 3300 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91505-4694; http://www.repriserec.com
