Greatest Hits - Air Supply (CD)

God's greatest invention. What do ya say, what is it? The tree, the water, the sun? BZZZZT, sorry, wrong answer. Greatest invention bestowed upon us by the Almighty is the woman. That's the story from us Air Supply fans, and we're stickin' to it.

One look at the song titles on this greatest hits compilation will tell you everything you need to know. The word "love" appears in four out of nine song titles, and if I had to pick the one thing that I found even remotely annoying about this CD and Air Supply in general, that would be it. This is not counting the single "Love And Other Bruises", which was a minor hit for them in their homeland of Australia. This was a few years before they went international via opening for a certain Rod Stewart.

The Track Listing for this greatest hits album is as follows:

1.) Lost In Love
2.) Even The Nights Are Better
3.) The One That You Love
4.) Every Woman In The World
5.) Chances
6.) Making Love Out Of Nothing At All
7.) All Out Of Love
8.) Here I Am
9.) Sweet Dreams

Pretty much the two upbeat songs are placed at the beginning, and followed by a slew of ballads. Some of the ballads border on upbeat, but for the most part, are designed to be slow-danced to at all 13 bars across the nation in which any of Air Supply's music still gets played even so much as once a month.

"Lost In Love" is just about as tender as music can possibly get without going completely to pudding. Aw hell, it does go completely to pudding. Accompanied by angelic female backing vocals, the yearning vocals of Russell Hitchcock and Graham Russell, who are nearly indistinguishable, sing softly to this gentle string-laced melody. This song is so beautiful that I myself don't even bother to pay attention to what the chord sequence is. Most songs, it's obvious right away because it's practically all there is -- C Amin F and G, or C G Amin E (that one's way too popular), but when I listen to "Lost In Love", I don't even bother. It's as if the song is transcendent to its very own melody, far more than the sum of its parts combined. Granted, that's a cheap way to push my point, but that's basically it. The final chorus finds our singers Graham and Russell kicking it up an octave, just so you remember who it is you're listening to.

In a slightly more earnest song, "Even The Nights Are Better", Graham and Russell (also known as... heh, GnR) continue to shamelessly wear their hearts on their sleeve, professing to the world that this woman is the greatest living thing on the planet. At the same time, their attention seems as devoted to the Fate that brought them together as it does to the woman herself:

Even the nights are better
Now that we're here together

Guitar soloing is often referred to as "noodling", but the guitar solo in "Even The Nights Are Better" is one of the few that actually sounds like something noodle-y. Of course, maybe that's just 'cause it's a limp noodle (I do picture a limp noodle in my head), but still, the solo is played with deadly accuracy, and it's basically playing two notes at the same time. It's hard to believe something that has such a bizarre tone and texture to its sound could come out so melodic.

So then we come to "The One That You Love", and the decidedly 2nd most annoying thing about Air Supply. The chorus of this song comes out anthemically with the words, Here I am, the one that you love. They have a song called "Here I Am", yet this is not it! And to make matters even more inexplicable, the song that actually has the title "Here I am" only uses the expression once, while this song uses it at the beginning of every chorus.

Even though this is the beginning of the ballads, the chords on the piano are "power chords", in which the third (or middle) note is removed. This lends some urgency to the tune. To me, the greatest part is the bridge, in which GnR sing We have the right, you know. That's just a really unusual thing to say in a love song, but it sounds great.

"Every Woman In The World" and "Chances" are probably in my bottom two songs on the album. "Chances" mostly 'cause it is the one song on here that I had never heard before I picked it up. It's still a wonderfully theatrical and dramatic song, but it always reminds me of back in the day when I was looking for an other song that turned out to be "Wind Of Change" by the Scorpions. Something in "Chances" sounds similar (the high note) and had me thinking for just a brief second that just maybe that WAS the song I had been looking for for so long. Later, I found out it wasn't, and I've felt mostly ambivalent towards the song since then. As for "Every Woman In The World", the harmonizing between GnR is at some of its greatest here. I guess the song just always struck me as kind of mawkish and elementary, both in the melody and the lyrics. The whole thing that's supposed to be so great about this woman is that she's the greatest one on the planet, so why would it be a good thing if she were every woman in the world? If it's supposed to imply that this dude sees his woman every time he sees any woman at all, I don't get that impression from the rest of the lyrics. I don't know, maybe I'm just being stupid.

Now normally when artists release Greatest Hits albums, and they put some new song in with the greatest hits, it turns out like crap. Huey Lewis and the News had that "100 Years From Now" song, Billy Joel threw a bunch of boring stuff at the end of his 3rd greatest hits album (although I guess "Hey Girl" was okay, and I guess I owe an apology to any "To Make You Feel My Love" fans), and Phil Collins' "Hits" album had "Dance Into The Light", which granted was actually the title track of its own album in 1997, but still felt out of place in an album dominated mostly by vintage 80's Phil. "It's In Your Eyes" would have been a far better pick, but beside the point.

"Making Love Out Of Nothing At All" was that song for Air Supply's greatest hits collection. But this song stormed its way straight up to #2 on the charts. So I guess I should say I'm surprised, but I gotta tell ya, I'm not. This is just about the highlight of the album (2nd only to a song we haven't gotten to yet). I remember not liking this song as much as the others back in the day, but over the years I've built up a penchant for the intense, and to say that this song was intense would be the biggest understatement of all time. Lyrically, this may very well be one of the greatest love songs ever written. A small(ish) sample:

Every time I see you all the rays of the sun
Are streaming through the waves in your hair;
And every star in the sky is taking aim
At your eyes like a spotlight,
The beating of my heart is a drum, and it s lost
And it s looking for a rhythm like you.
You can take the darkness from the pit of the night
And turn into a beacon burning endlessly bright.
I ve got to follow it, cause everything I know, well it s nothing till I give it to you.

I can make the run or stumble,
I can make the final block;
And I can make every tackle, at the sound of the whistle,
I can make all the stadiums rock.
I can make tonight forever,
Or I can make it disappear by the dawn;
And I can make you every promise that has ever been made,
And I can make all your demons be gone.

But I m never gonna make it without you,
Do you really want to see me crawl?

Chills, man. Freakin' CHILLS!!!

That's a hard act to follow, I know that much. "All Out Of Love" is pretty simple in terms of lyrics, even if you weren't comparing it to the whopper above. The melody, too, is perhaps a little too simple, but it gets better the farther you get into it. The last minute of this song is tremendous and definitely crank-worthy. This whole hodgepodge of colossal organs and string sections explode out. And even if it's just three-chord vanilla pudding, it's still beautiful in that it just smothers you.

"Here I Am" follows in a similar vein, in the same key and all, which gives it good chemistry with the song before it. Mayhaps they knew they needed that little extra punch this late in the album. This song has a bit more "going on" in it, more little riffs here and there like the one just after the line Just when I thought I was over you. I think most of the allure in this song for me is the familiarity of it. I think it must have been one of those really overplayed songs back in the 80's. It utilizes the tried and true trick of holding off on the last word in the chorus, then belting it out and having the chorus start over again behind it.

Finally, we come to what I would say is the greatest song on the entire collection, "Sweet Dreams". Back when I used to "song hunt" for tunes from my childhood, I recall a couple of women calling in to request this song. And usually requests suck, 'cause they always ask for the same stuff, but I stuck around, and this was the song they requested. Instantly, I recognized it off of the fancy synthesized introduction.

It begins with just a small whir that grows in pitch... and even if you've heard the song a hundred times, so that you know which key the song is in, so that you would know when the whir stopped going up, it still always keeps going up for longer than you expect it to.

The guitars take over to tell us what kinda song this is gonna be, it's gonna be a scary one! Nothing like some dark, low piano notes to cement that feeling. This is the only song on the album in a minor key, hell, it might just be the only song Air Supply have ever done in a minor key. So if you think Air Supply are all happy go lucky funtime schmaltz, then okay, maybe you're right, but I implore you to stop and take one listen at "Sweet Dreams" and see what you think then.

The song is extremely quiet in the verses, with a lonesome vocal and a piano. You picture this empty room with this lonely guy, and the only light is from a single candle. The higher-octaved vocals come in later, and by that time you should be pretty well braced for the chorus, which will in turn offer some mercy in that it's a lone vocal singing it the first time. So at this point, it may seem like just another Air Supply song. Just wait til the second chorus, in which GnR team up on it.

Close your eyes
I want to ride the skies
In my sweet dreams
Close your eyes
I want to see you tonight
In my sweet dreams

Damn, I hate when the words don't look as good on the screen as they do in the song. But I'll tell you what, when it comes to leviathans, very few of them make more waves than this sucker.

And so now that I've taken you on a ridiculously long tour of an album with less than 10 songs, I'll just leave you with this final thought.

You will find, as you look back upon your life, that the moments when you really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love. ~Henry Drummond

So have at it, y'all. Listen to Air Supply, and save your soul. That's all for today.