Pages/Kenny Loggins -- Who's Right, Who's Wrong

For this Reminiscings of Youth article, I decided to go back a few years and into the AOR genre. But first, for those of my generation, do you remember this band?

Yep, this is Mr. Mister with their huge 1985 hit "Broken Wings". It made it to No. 1 on the American and Canadian charts, and although I personally didn't become a fan of this song or the band itself during my university years, I certainly recognize it and the music video since it got plenty of airplay and heavy rotation on the video shows.

The big surprise for me here was that years before Mr. Mister, two of the members, Richard Page and Steve George had created this AOR band in 1978 called Pages. And it turns out one of their songs luckily ended up on one of my BRIO AOR CDs.

Pages never got all that successful aside from a single called "I Do Believe In You" from 1979 that peaked at No. 84, their only song that got into the Billboard Hot 100. The single was also a part of their 2nd album that year, "Future Street", and from that same release came "Who's Right, Who's Wrong".

Now, perhaps I ought to be guilty of a little fraud here since in actual fact, I had never known about "Who's Right, Who's Wrong" or Pages when I was a teenager. It was only through my purchase of that BRIO CD that I found out about this marvelous ballad. But still, the sound that emanated through my headphones when I first heard this in Ichikawa was so very reminiscent of what I was hearing during my childhood on the radio, and boy, was I happy to have finally made my acquaintance with this one.

Created by Page and Kenny Loggins (no stranger to AOR himself), that Michael Brecker sax opening is just perfect, and I would go so far to say that it's one of the greatest openings of any pop song that I've heard. It was instant relaxation at first listen. The remainder of "Who's Right, Who's Wrong" with the keyboards, synthesizer, the vocals and the Jerry Hey strings arrangement struck me as what I have loved about AOR.

Loggins himself would also record his own mellow version of the song for his 1979 album "Keep The Fire" with Page and the Michael Jackson on backing vocals. However, I have to say that the Pages version will always be my favourite by far.

Try as I might, I couldn't find out in which month "Future Street" was released in 1979 and so for the kayo comparison, I've opted to find out which Japanese singers made their debuts in or around September 1979...since after all, we are in September.

1. Asami Kado -- Fascination (ファッシネイション）

2. Saki Kubota -- Ihojin （異邦人）

3. Chage & Aska -- Hitorizaki（ひとり咲き）