Kenny Loggins -- Heart to Heart

 

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Having done my usual self-imposed quota of four urban contemporary tunes today, I was quite ready to call it a day on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", but having just completed a Skype lesson with my friend that got me all buoyed up, I did feel like putting this particular article up as a fifth contribution for Friday. Plus, I've been itching to do this Kenny Loggins song as a ROY piece for some weeks now. Another reason is that in the past few weeks, I've observed that Loggins has been getting that love again from Hollywood via "Danger Zone" returning to the "Top Gun" sequel and "Footloose" making a surprising, hilarious and super cool appearance in the third season of "The Umbrella Academy".

However, those two Loggins hits were his rock n' roll tunes later in the 1980s, and my favourite song by this well-coiffed singer-songwriter from Washington State is purely in the AOR genre. Yep, I'm talking about "Heart to Heart", his November 1982 single that came from his September album "High Adventure".

All these years, I'd assumed that "Heart to Heart", one of my favourite songs in any genre and language, was something from the late 1970s by Loggins so it was some surprise that it actually came out in the early 1980s. It was such a regular presence on my radio and it currently still is one of those soft rock classics that manage to send a thrill up and down my spine from intro to outro. It's amazing about the combination of fellows who came up with "Heart to Heart": Loggins, Canadian music royalty David Foster and Doobie Brothers' Michael McDonald, and together they created this love song of second chances and keeping the faith. All three, by the way, already have their representations on the blog, including Loggins' cover of Pages' "Who's Right, Who's Wrong".

"Heart to Heart" may be a love song but whenever I hear this one, I always think of a Cessna flying over the Grand Canyon at sunset. Pure freedom and joy! It's got a lot of wonderfully mixed influences in there: the elegance and romanticism from Loggins' alternately sultry/soaring vocals and the shimmering strings, David Sanborn's downtown saxophone solo, and McDonald's and Foster's funky/groovy keyboard work. I make it a point to listen to it now and then just to remind myself that amazingly moving music still exists here. 

The song hit No. 1 and No. 3 on the Canadian and US Adult Contemporary charts respectively. I've actually talked about "Heart to Heart" before on my "Radio Influences (City Pop/AOR)" article back in 2018 before I started up Reminiscings of Youth, and there are a few songs in that list which have become ROY articles since then along with at least one more song that will be getting its own ROY treatment in the near future. I felt that like those, "Heart to Heart" needed its own article since it is such a beloved reminiscing song from my youth.

One final reason that I've put up "Heart to Heart" is that the three Japanese songs that are following this paragraph are all from the similar City Pop/J-AOR genres. I think that's the first time that's ever happened in a ROY article. To be precise, these are all singles that made their premiere in November 1982.

EPO -- Uwasa ni Naritai (うわさになりたい）

Yasuhiro Abe -- We Got It!

Junichi Inagaki -- Dramatic Rain （ドラマティック・レイン）(October 1982)