One person’s view: “This song is quintessential Chicago. If you wanted to know how lame and dull they and soft rock can be, look to this song. ... The piano, the synths, the bass, the percussion, and the strings all sound fake to the point where you question if it was even made by a band and not some overpaid tool in a studio.” – Nerd with an Afro
The public’s view: 2.49 / 5.00
The period from autumn 1982 to autumn 1984 was a glorious time for the Hot 100, as many incredible recording artists were at their peaks and the pop charts were rewarding the highest quality efforts. The public was showing an unusual amount of good taste and an aptitude for selecting music that would endure for future generations. Optimism was even floating in the air for the latest Chicago release. The album’s title conveyed the excitement: Chicago 17. Certainly, there wouldn’t be any bland mushiness on this record like there was on Chicago 16 and Chicago XIV. A prime number meant prime material.
But when “Hard Habit to Break” hit the airwaves as the album’s second single, it reminded everyone that Chicago had mostly abandoned its rock ‘n’ roll origins and had devolved into an adult contemporary act. “Hard Habit” was a love ballad, albeit an ambitious and unconventional one. Producer and arranger David Foster threw every trick he knew at it and would later claim that the song was his finest work. The track included several jarring shifts to its tempo and loudness. The most unexpected twist was that Peter Cetera’s vocals were intermingled with lines sung by Bill Champlin. It wasn’t clear whether the two men were supposed to be awkwardly serenading the same woman, or whether they were awkwardly serenading each other.
Although Foster’s slick production kept the tune from being as uninteresting as it might have been, the critics still gave it plenty of flak. “Hard Habit to Break” is included on all five of the lists of the worst songs of 1984 that I’ve found. It would have been a shoo-in for an entry here if Chicago’s follow-up single, “You’re the Inspiration”, hadn’t usurped its place as a “bad” hit.
Cetera and Foster originally wrote “You’re the Inspiration” for Kenny Rogers. The song seemed like a good fit for him. It was exactly the type of sycophantic Lionel Richie-style love ode that filled Kenny’s swimming pools with caviar while he was riding the lucrative country-pop crossover wave of the early ‘80s. Surprisingly, though, Rogers wasn’t interested. He was working with a budding young master of musical excitement named Richard Marx, and Marx could churn out sycophantic Lionel Richie-style love odes just as efficiently as Richie himself. Rogers picked a couple of Marx’s compositions for his next album and ignored “Inspiration”. Cetera saw this rejection as a blessing because it allowed him to keep the ballad for his band’s use on Chicago 17.
As with “Hard Habit”, David Foster loaded Chicago’s rendition of “Inspiration” up to the ceiling with gimmicks. The group’s pre-Foster records had a natural flow to them, like what you might hear from a jam band, but Foster favored a technique known as subito in which a song’s dynamics go through abrupt changes. This grabbed listeners’ attention at the cost of forcing every transition to be precisely programmed. His productions sounded synthetic. The vocals on “Inspiration” also featured double-tracking and echo effects which suggested that Peter Cetera had been cloned repeatedly. A whole army of him was threatening to engulf us with a shrill falsetto that kept suddenly jumping up and down the scale. And if the video is telling us the truth, the song didn’t have just one keyboardist. It had three guys playing keyboards – plus a fourth dude on piano. Foster had no idea, however, how to use Chicago’s famous horn section on this track. Saxophonist Walt Parazaider is shown reading the newspaper during the performance.
So does all of this wizardry elevate the song? Let’s compare it with other works of its kind. A typical Richie/Marx/Rogers love ballad is like a school cafeteria meatloaf. You are never happy to see it on your plate, but you understand why it is there. Chicago’s “You’re the Inspiration” is that same lumpy meatloaf, but don’t you dare call it that. Now it is an artisanal savory cake of grass-fed Preakness-grade pâté. It’s delivered to your table on a silver platter, and there’s a little sparkler candle in it and a thin layer of gravy drizzled around it in an ornate spiral. Oh, and the lunch lady is topless. The meal is still barely edible, but at least it’s an experience.
We can be thankful that this inherently dull ballad didn’t wind up with Kenny Rogers as was first intended. He was not the right man to imbue it with the dynamism that it needed. His singing relied on warmth and subtlety, not flapping his larynx all over the place like Cetera. Kenny probably thought a subito was something from the value menu at Taco Bell. I give him credit for turning down the assignment and letting Chicago handle it. While Cetera’s showboating and Foster’s overproduction may have contributed to the decline of a great band, their studio antics are the best thing about “You’re the Inspiration”.
My rating: 4 / 10
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