After the release of Tonight! in 1981, the Four Tops seemed to have regained their touch. The album was commercially successful (#5 R&B, #37 pop) and wasn’t too shabby a listen. It had a couple of stinkers, but nothing approaching true awfulness.
Well, for the rest of the 1980s, the Four Tops fell into a deep dark abyss until emerging for one final album that let them go out with some dignity.
Hold on to your butts…
ONE MORE MOUNTAIN
Released: September 1982
Overall this is a bad album, but it’s more deflating than anything. At least Levi Stubbs gives a gorgeous vocal performance on the ballad “I Believe In You And Me” (7/10) which is almost entirely him and a piano. The other group members give sparse vocal backing and some strings show up to close up shop.
ALBUM GRADE: D
BACK WHERE I BELONG
Released: November 1983
After a decade away, the Four Tops returned to Motown records. It was a lackluster effort. Three songs manage to get their heads barely above water (“I Just Can’t Walk Away”, “Sail On”, and “Body And Soul”) and they all rate a generous 6/10. But there are some shockingly terrible tracks here, particularly the title song.
You can’t always go home, kids. Not unless you want this kind of embarrassment.
ALBUM GRADE: D-
MAGIC
Released: June 1985
Look at that album cover.
Stare at it.
Would you bet there’s anything good about this?
Especially given that it was released in the mid-1980s when loud drums were beginning drown out everything and everybody.
ALBUM GRADE: F
INDESTRUCTIBLE
Released: September 1988
Okay, here’s where the Four Tops get some of that dignity back. First of all, they’re allowed to be middle-aged men instead of posing as teen heart throbs like on that terrible Magic cover.
The title track isn’t particularly good, but it did give the group one final top 40 pop single in the US (#35), while also giving them some action in the UK (#30). It also featured Phil Collins on drums and Smokey Robinson giving some help on backing vocals. It’s a 6/10 for me.
I also like that “Indestructible” basically describes the Four Tops. Four friends from Detroit who’d been singing together since 1953 with no hint of a single lineup change. And they wouldn’t alter membership until Lawrence Payton died in 1997.
There may have been better vocal groups, but didn’t nobody hang together like Payton, Levi Stubbs, Obie Benson, and Duke Fakir.
And I was delighted a few years ago when I heard the song “Loco in Acapulco” for the first time. It is absolutely stupid and cheesy late 80s pop, but in a good way. Easily the best song on the album and an 8/10 for me. Most of that mileage is accrued on some happy time fun absurdity.
Bless Phil Collins (who again played drums) for gifting this ridiculousness to the Tops. Collins co-wrote the song with Lamont Dozier, y’know the “Dozier” from Holland-Dozier-Holland that produced most of the group’s big 1960s Motown hits.
The song did nothing whatsoever in the US, but was a smash in the UK reaching #7.
I’m not going to bother with the rest of album (I grade it as a C-), which meanders from fine to bleh with some ack thrown in because I prefer we leave on this high note note with the Four Tops.
I bet they never recorded another album because they were like, “Fuck, we’re never gonna record a song this good again. Let’s just do the oldies circuit and get out while the gettings good.”
And it was indeed a fucking great way to go out.