| | Melissa Manchester Help Is On The Way CD Melissa Manchester Discography of CDs
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An unimpressive, directionless effort, Help Is on the Way found Melissa Manchester breaking no new ground as a songwriter. In fact, "Talkin' to Myself" and "Be Somebody" were artistic backpedaling, markedly inferior to anything she had done before. "Monkey See, Monkey Do" was the first sign of Manchester's tendency to cover artists she was either as good as or superior to, in this instance, Michael Franks. Only the lilting calypso "Headlines" stands out in an otherwise characterless collection. The rest is a pretty much forgettable attempt to record another version of Melissa. ~ Charles Donovan
Personnel: Melissa Manchester (vocals, keyboards); John Vastano (vocals, guitar); Kirk Bruner (vocals, trombone, drums); Lenny Castro (vocals, percussion); Betty Jones, Charity McCrary, Brie Howard, Linda McCrary-Campbell, Sundray Tucker, Jan E. Jones, John Cooker Lopresti, Brenda Gooch, Terri Hendricks, Joe Esposito, Steve Nelson, Vini Poncia (vocals); David Wolfert (guitar, sitar); Rich Felto (trumpet); Richard Hyde (trombone); Dick Nash , Doug Wintz, Bill Peterson (horns); James Newton Howard (keyboards); Tom Saviano (wind); Gary Coleman (background vocals).
Melissa Manchester Help Is On The Way Songs Help Is On The Way Review
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Buy Help Is On The Way CD Purchase Help Is On The Way CD To buy, Click on price to add to cart | Melissa Manchester Home To Myself CD (1973) Reissued
Help Is On The Way album
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"Now, I don't have the soul of Joni, and I cannot see myself like Miss Laura," sang Melissa Manchester on "Funny That Way," thus marking out the competition. Like Mitchell and Nyro, Manchester was a piano-playing female singer, but she was right in noting that while there was a surface similarity in their musical approaches, she did not dig quite as deep emotionally as her predecessors. Manchester came from a lighter pop, supper club tradition, and on her debut album, singing songs most of which had lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager, she explored a territory that seemed almost barren at the time -- a sophisticated, non-rock pop/jazz style that emphasized delivery and chops over individualistic, confessional writing. (It bore some similarities to the style of Manchester's former employer, the more flamboyant Bette Midler.) ...
| | Melissa Manchester Bright Eyes CD (1974) Reissued
Help Is On The Way CD music
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On her second album, Melissa Manchester remained largely under the influence of some immediate predecessors, though she was beginning to show evidence of an original talent. The impact of Laura Nyro still could be heard on songs like the title track and "O Heaven (How You've Changed to Me)," with their vibrant gospel tone. If Manchester seemed to come at such a style as a respectful outsider, as opposed to Nyro's obsessively inside approach, it may have been that her arsenal of musical genres were secondhand, acquired through her mentor, Paul Simon, for whom she wrote the bubbly "Ode to Paul." Where Nyro had the intensity of Nina Simone, Manchester was merely eclectic, assimilating elements of jazz, rock, soul, and pre-rock pop with an attractive playfulness that never lost a certain self-consciousness. Her new songwriting partner, Adrienne Anderson, while closer to her sensibility than her previous one, Carole Bayer Sager, nevertheless did not match Manchester's own writing alone. And the improvement in that writing was the real story here: on songs like "Inclined" and "He Is the One," Manchester revealed a talent for sensitive writing combined with assured yet restrained singing on romantic ...
| | Melissa Manchester Better Days & Happy Endings CD (1976)
Help Is On The Way music CDs
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Following the success of Melissa, and particularly its Top Ten single "Midnite Blue," Melissa Manchester reassembled the same team and attempted to replicate the formula. Primarily, that meant more intimate, lushly produced ballads with lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager, and these included "Better Days," essentially a "Midnite Blue" sequel that told what happened the morning after, and "Just You and I," a song with more than a whiff of "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Both those songs, along with a cover of Fontella Bass' "Rescue Me," made the singles charts, though only "Just You and I" cracked the Top 40. The funny thing was that the big ballad follow-up to "Midnite Blue" was right there on the record if anybody at Arista had had the ears to hear it: at the end of side one was Manchester and Sager's "Come in from the Rain," which was turned into a chart single by Captain & Tennille the following year, subsequently covered by numerous artists, and became a pop standard. Even so, Better Days & Happy Endings confirmed that Manchester had abandoned the individual creativity displayed on her second album, Bright Eyes, in favor ...
| | Melissa Manchester Emergency CD (1983)
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Melissa Manchester followed her comeback album Hey Ricky ...
| | Melissa Manchester For The Working Girl CD (1980)
Help Is On The Way album
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Hearing Melissa Manchester squander her considerable vocal talents on faceless slabs of balladry like "Without You" is painful indeed. But this was clearly the ethos behind For the Working Girl: production-line, off-the-peg songwriting that deserved only the most perfunctory reading, pointlessly invested with all manner of vocal histrionics. Only those with a boundless appetite for saccharine should dwell on lethargic ...
| | Melissa Manchester Hey Ricky CD (1982)
Help Is On The Way CD music
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Nearing the end of her troubled tenure at Arista, Melissa Manchester settled for cheesy but cheerful, synth-drenched dance-pop. Extraordinarily, it was this fluff that won her first Grammy, in the form of "You Should Hear How She Talks About You." But apart from a baffling re-recording of "Come in from the Rain," there are guilty pleasures to be found on Hey Ricky, not ...
| | Acoustic Alchemy Blue Chip CD (1989)
Help Is On The Way music CDs
$12.35
| | Robi Kahakalau All I Want CD (2000)
Help Is On The Way songs
$13.29
| | Art Hodes Duets CD (2005)
Help Is On The Way album
$14.69
| | Disney Karaoke Series: Disneymania Vol. 2 CD (2006)
Help Is On The Way CD music
$9.05
| | Duane Steele Ghost Town CD (2008) (Import) Import
Help Is On The Way music CDs
$26.29
| | Los Cafres Barrilete CDs (2008)
Help Is On The Way songs
$11.69
| | Yacazu Coollikamoddafokka (Rens Newland & Flip Philipp) CD (2008) (Import)
Help Is On The Way album
$17.99
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