Search - Crystal Gayle :: We Must Belive in Magic

A whole bunch of classic tracks despite the rather short run

Dave | United States | 01/01/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

""We Must Believe In Magic" was originally released in mid 1977, & commercially, it was a breakthrough album for Crystal--it peaked at #12 on the Billboard charts & was certified platinum within a year of its original release, largely thanks to the huge, million-selling hit "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue". The album really did deserve the success, because most of the album is great, displaying Crystal at her best--as ever, her vocals are consistently sumptuous, & although she didn't write anything here, her expressiveness is one-of-a-kind & she consistently comes up with just the right treatment to get maximum impact from each track--in other words, she very much makes the songs her own. The aforementioned "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" opens the album--it's somewhat jazz-flavored and it's wonderfully breezy with an irresistible rolling piano part, and it's melancholy, yet not depressing--as good as it is, don't let its commercial success fool you... Not only are there a bunch of other great songs here, but the album is also impressively varied--there's the amusingly dramatic "River Road", the stomping bluesy rocker "Green Door", the wistful ballad "Make A Dream Come True", the somewhat frantic Cole Porter cover "It's All Right With Me", the stately, otherworld-ish title track with hypnotic wordless vocals from Crystal, & the punchy, somewhat sneering "All I Wanna Do In Life", all of which are gems. As much credit as Crystal herself deserves, you also can't deny the excellent job by producer Allen Reynolds--there's lots of neat stuff going on like the clanking percussion, flutes, & phasing on "All I Wanna Do In Life", the cool orchestration on "Make A Dream Come True", a combination of fiddle and biting guitar on "It's All Right With Me", & Moog synthesizer (and god knows what else) on the title track. The weakest track is the somewhat ho-hum ballad "Going Down Slow", but it's still got the cool interplay of the phased guitar line & the orchestration. I have a complaint with this album, & it's the same complaint I have with so many of Crystal's albums--it's too darn short!! Clocking in right around half an hour, it really cries out for a couple more songs. Yes, I'd rather have half an hour of great material than 15 minutes of great material & 25 minutes of dreck--I'm not denying the consistent high quality of this album, but it is on the short side. Still though, this is a highly recommended album. Plus, the album sleeve with the checker-board style of the photograph of Crystal with her increasingly ultra-long hair is smile-inducing. Don't expect to find the Razor & Tie label's CD release of this album at a low price. Tracks from this album regularly crop up on Crystal compilation CDs of which there are a LOT. There are also a lot of vinyl copies around that you can probably get at a very reasonable price so you can hear ALL of the tracks from the album in their original running order. "We Must Believe In Magic" is a great showcase for one of the most sublime vocalists of all time, Crystal Gayle."

A very upbeat album

Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 03/11/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Despite the inclusion of Don't it make my brown eyes blue, this is a very upbeat album, full of optimism and happiness. The big international hit is the only sad song here, although it blends in well with the rest of the album.Many of the other songs are originals. My favorites are River road, All I wanna do in life and the title track, but all of them are brilliant. There are at least two covers. The oldest song here (It's all right with me) is by Cole Porter despite being sometimes credited to Irving Berlin. Green door was a fifties pop hit in the USA for Jim Love and in the UK for Frankie Vaughn. It was revived by Shakin' Stevens in the eighties. This was a brilliant album when first released and still sounds brilliant today. All of the tracks have been re-issued on CD compilations at one time or another but it's nice to hear them together the way they were originally released."