Loving You Review

The soundtrack years start here, and the pattern that would define the next decade is already visible: a handful of properly written songs surrounded by material commissioned to fit a scene. Teddy Bear is the hit and it is a superb piece of pop, a shuffle with a baritone sax and a vocal that plays coy and knows it. Mean Woman Blues is the rocker and it is ferocious, probably the hardest thing he cut that year.

Got a Lot o' Livin' to Do is fine. After that the film material thins out fast, and the second side is a set of ballads and gospel adjacent numbers recorded separately, some lovely, none essential. The sound is bigger and slicker than the debut, with backing vocals doing work the echo used to do, and something is lost in that trade. Worth having for two tracks and worth understanding as the moment the machine started choosing his songs for him.