Bob Welch – French Kiss [1977] … Rediscovered!!

 

While I was listening to the, 1977, debut album of Bob Welch, I searched the internet to find reviews of it. First stop the www.thevinyldistrict.com, where the reviewer states: “Welch is no wordsmith, and lyrically he doesn’t have a single interesting thing to say. … The guy makes Lionel Richie look like T.S. Eliot”. 

For a moment I thought to change my choice for “French Kiss” to be this week’s album, but a voice inside me asked: “since when do you read or listen only what the critics say it’s good?”.   

A few lines after those words the same reviewer says: “Musically, Welch was doing something far more interesting. At a time when the disco/rock divide seemed–and I stress that seemed–insurmountable, he was fusing the two in his songs”.

Good or bad, give it a listen. It’s tasty stuff with a mix of hard rock guitar, disco-ish rhythms and sweeping strings, and after all, more than 1.000.000 copies of the album have been sold.