Taylor Dayne

I'm totally into Taylor Dayne right now -- and I'm not even sure what prompted it. But I'm loving it right now. Especially her song from The Shadow, "Original Sin." It's a Jim Steinman song so it's totally over the top and bombastic and I just love the hell out of it.

I'm also listening to the only entire Taylor Dayne CD I have imported to iTunes -- Can't Fight Fate -- which was released in 1989. I bought the CD completely and utterly on the strength of her Tell It To My Heart CD (which, in retrospect, is ultra-cheesy, but I say that like it's a bad thing, no?) I remember not liking the first single, "With Every Beat Of My Heart" all that much, but like all good pop music, it grew on me until I couldn't get it out of my head. The total highlight on the CD is the song "Up All Night" which Jeff and I love and we still trot it out every now and again for mix CDs and what not. At the rate it's going right now, it's likely to make my Summer Upbeat CDs, although it's way too early to tell as it's not even remotely summer yet.

And much like I bought Can't Fight Fate, I purchased Soul Dancing in 1993 (almost) sight unseen (or is it sound unheard.) The first single was a cover of the Barry White classic "Can't Get Enough of Your Love" which I immediately loved (and oddly enough, I'd never heard the original, but I'll chalk that up to youthful innocence and naivete.) Unfortunately, I wasn't as impressed with the rest of the album -- it seemed dreadfully overproduced and it was a shift away from dance to more R&B/soul which I've never really gotten into as much. The musical landscape had changed a lot too and, consequently, Taylor didn't have as much success with this album. Wendy and I always said that the reason the CD was a relative flop was because she didn't have a song where she said "The thrill is gone..." as both TITMH and CFF had songs where she sang that lyric. I ripped a few of the songs on it -- "Can't Get Enough Of Your Love," "Say A Prayer," and "Send Me A Lover" -- but ended up either selling the CD or giving it to the library.

Funny thing is now I wish I had it back because I'd love to give it another chance. Sadly, the Ames Library doesn't have it (they seem to fail me more often than not on those types of things) so I may be forced into re-purchasing select songs from iTunes. Or not. We'll see.

In the meantime, I'm just loving rediscovering this music.