CoronaVinyl Day 454 (A): Now and Forever by Air Supply

For an explanation of CoronaVinyl, click here.

After another hiatus prompted by vacation and insane work hours, CoronaVinyl is back.  And with the beginning of May, we start anew at "A."  As with many other letters, I don't have any "A" artists left who I haven't already featured, so I went with British-Australian soft rock duo Air Supply's seventh studio album, 1982's Now and Forever.

By 1982, soft rock was on the decline, and whether they new it or not, Air Supply was just starting to descend from their peak.  In the previous two years, the group had six Top 5 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 (including on #1, 1981's "The One That You Love").

Now and Forever wasn't poor performing by any means.  It reached #25 on the Billboard album chart and went platinum in the U.S.  It also featured the group's seventh Top 5 hit in the U.S. -- "Even the Nights Are Better" -- as well as two other Top 40 songs, both of which topped out at #38:  "Young Love" and "Two Less Lonely People in the World."  

However, as musical tastes were shifting, Air Supply was only left with two more Top 40 hits over the next two years.

Favorite Song on Side 1:  "Young Love"
Side 1 features all three of the hits from this album.  I went with "Young Love" because I think it's a pleasant reminder of what made Air Supply so popular.  It's a sappy love song with a big hook, almost a power ballad.  Graham Russell sings the choruses, and then Russell Hitchcock comes in for the soaring choruses.  It's the kind of song you expect to hear at the end of an early '80s teen romantic comedy, as the two star-crossed lovers run to each other for an enduring embrace in the rain.

Favorite Song on Side 2:  "One Step Closer"
This one is a little peppier than much of the album.  And if "Young Love" could have been the love theme to a teen rom com, this one could be the theme song to an early '80s sitcom called One Step Closer, where an earnest and likeable single mom tries to make ends meet when she moves her family back to where she grew up in suburban Minneapolis.  Sure, her kids can be a pain sometimes, but they have good hearts, and of course, her busybody best friend Tina is always stopping by for some comic relief and all the neighborhood gossip.