You may or
may not have heard of British songwriter/producer/musician Rod Temperton, but
you almost certainly are familiar with some of the hits he’s written:
·
Boogie
Nights, Always And Forever, and The Groove Line (all hits for the R&B group
Heatwave, of which Temperton was a member for a couple years)
·
Rock
With You, Off The Wall, and Thriller (Michael Jackson)
·
Baby
Come To Me (Patti Austin and James Ingram)
·
Sweet
Freedom (Michael McDonald)
Yet, for
some reason, no one could even crack the top 100 with “Mystery”, perhaps the
best song he’s ever written. The Manhattan Transfer, who just managed to hit
the Top 40 in 1983 with “Spice of Life” (which was co-written by Temperton),
released “Mystery” as the follow-up single, but it never gained any traction.
It also appears on Anita Baker’s breakthrough 1986 album Rapture, but was wasted as the B-side of “Caught Up in the Rapture”.
(To be fair, Baker had 5 successful other tracks from the LP and didn’t exactly
need any more.)
Quite a
mystery why this one never made it, but the lack of chart success certainly
shouldn’t diminish the quality of the song. Perhaps it hit #1 in some alternate musical
universe.
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