CoronaVinyl Day 260 (A): Lost in Love by Air Supply

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "A," and I'm going with one of the first vinyl records I ever bought, Air Supply's 1980 soft rock classic, Lost in Love, which I purchased at a Bloomington, Indiana Goodwill store sometime around 2001, when I didn't even have a working turntable.

Air Supply is one of my guilty pleasures.  My parents had their 1983 Greatest Hits album, so I used to listen to more Air Supply than most kindergarteners, or so I assume.  Formed in Melbourne in 1975, Air Supply was Aussie vocalist Russell Hitchcock and English vocalist/songwriter Graham Russell, backed by kind of a rotating group of musicians over the years.

Lost in Love was the group's fifth studio album, though only their second album released in the U.S.  Thanks to the work of legendary A&R man and record exec, Arista Records founder (and now Rock and Roll Hall of Famer) Clive Davis -- who signed the group to Arista prior to this album -- Lost in Love was the group's breakthrough in America.

The album only reached #22 on the Billboard album chart -- their first charting album in the U.S. -- but it spawned three Top 5 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 (the first three tracks on the album, no less).  The title track was originally recorded the year earlier, but they re-recorded it for this album, and it went to #3.  "All Out of Love" followed, going to #2.  Then "Every Woman in the World" went to #5.  They were the first three of an impressive seven Top 5 singles in a row in the U.S.

Lost in Love is pure early '80s soft rock.  Sure, it's a little cheesy, but that's it's allure.  Hitchcock and Graham's vocals play off each other smoothly, with Hitchcock every now and then showing off his pipes.  It has since gone double platinum in the U.S., making it their best-selling studio album in America.

As alluded to above, the group continued their success over the next several years, though their soft rock flame fizzled out in about 1985, as the soft genre in general fell prey to the other more peppy genres of the day.  But between 1980 and 1985, Air Supply had 11 Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, 8 of which were Top 5 songs -- and ten of those eleven songs were also Top 5 songs on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.

Favorite song on Side 1:  "All Out of Love"
As schmaltzy as this song is, it's a lovely pop song that pulls at your heartstrings.  Sometimes, I wonder how many crestfallen lovers sang this to their ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends in the early '80s in an effort to patch things up.  

Favorite song on Side 2:  "I Can't Get Excited"
This song is as close to power pop as I imagine Air Supply ever got.  It's more punchy and features an electric guitar more prominently than most of the other songs on the album.