LP Review: In Love
Released: 1987
LP Charts: #50 R&B; #172 pop
Bunny DeBarge’s one attempt at a solo career was a hybrid of her own writing talents and contributions from outside hit-makers. Also, it’s light years ahead of her brother El’s debut solo album, which he had very little control over.
The lesson: if you want a good (or decent) album from the DeBarge family, let the DeBarge family call at least some of the shots.
Anyhoo, “Save The Best For Me” opens In Love is above-replacement late ‘80s female funk-pop. That means it strongly hews to the ground broken by Janet Jackson on Control. Meanwhile “Fine Line” sounds like Paula Abdul style dance-pop, except it came out before Abdul “straight up” took over the charts. It also features a pretty good keyboard solo. Shameful that Motown didn’t give this song a bigger promotional push.
“Dance All Night” also appeared on Bad Boys by Bunny’s siblings. Her version is slightly better, but they’re both good. “So Good For You”? Decent midtempo listening music.
The LP finally slows down with “Woman In Love”, which is one of them real synth-bass heavy quiet storm ballads. It starts out well enough, but the chorus is… underwhelming. Very underwhelming. To the point of annoyance by the time the song ends.
“Let’s Spend the Night” has production help from brother Bobby DeBarge and you can tell. The vocal arrangement has his touch. This song’s structure definitely has a classic 70s soul vibe, which means it suffers from keyboards substituting for actual horns and the lack of live drums. Woulda been much better had it been recorded in 1977, not 1987.
ALBUM GRADE: C
Generally speaking the dance and midtempo tunes are where it’s at on this LP. Kind of surprising given that while in the family group, Bunny was the one writing and singing ballads. Hmm, in fact looking at the writing credits, it turns out the better songs of the album were written by the outsiders while the pedestrian songs were by Bunny. That’s unusual for a DeBarge album.
Anyhoo, Bunny never had another solo record and I can only recommend this one for the diehard or extremely DeBarge fan. The first four songs are fine for generalists of 1980s pop(-funk).
Song Scores
Save The Best For Me: 6.5/10
Fine Line: 7/10
So Good For You: 6.5/10
Dance All Night: 7/10
Woman In Love: 4/10
Never Let Die: 5/10
Let’s Spend the Night: 6/10
Life Saver: 6/10
I Still Believe: 5/10