Released: August 1981
With Three For Love still selling like hot cakes on the charts, SOLAR made the decision to quickly release this album to fulfill a distribution deal with RCA Records.
ESSENTIALLY, RCA was like, “Hold on a minute! Y’all owe us another Shalamar album before you can move on to a different record distributor.” So SOLAR was like, “Fine, we’ll give you a record, but we’re gonna let the singers from Shalamar take almost complete control of the process because we don’t care that much anyways.”
And that’s how Jody Watley, Howard Hewett, and especially Jeffrey Daniel had their fingerprints all over this as they wrote or co-wrote eight of the album’s nine songs.
Given that backstory, Go For It could have easily been a lazy disaster (the LP cover certainly was), but instead it turns out to be a fine piece of music. It wasn’t promoted whatsoever so sadly sank almost without a trace, but there is some damn good stuff here.
The first three songs on the album are all written by Daniel. “Go For It” is some fun disco-funk with Daniel on primary lead and Hewett on co-lead. “Appeal” is some sexy disco-funk with Watley on the lead. “The Final Analysis” is a meh ballad with Daniel again on lead.
“You’ve Got Me Running” is a dramatic stomper co-written by Hewett with balladeer James Ingram. It has an incredible wall of sound as horns and strings pound away.
Side Two begins with the LP’s best song, the short and sugary “Sweeter As the Days Go By”. It’s the Motown Sound updated for the early 80s and has a delightful finger-poppin’ piano hook. As the album’s only single it reached #19 R&B.
“Talk To Me” is up next and quite the extended jam at 6:14. I don’t mind in the least especially when they hit a breakdown that feels like you’re sailing on the boogie.
“Good Feelings” is a nice ditty and “Rocker” attempts to re-create the magic of the previous LP’s “Pop Along Kid”. It fails to fully do so, but it’s not a bad song in the least with that slap bass working overtime.
ALBUM GRADE: B
Look, we’ve established by now that you’re not getting any groundbreaking musical advancements with Shalamar. But you’re sure gonna have fun. Sometimes that’s enough.
Song Scores
Go For It: 7.5/10
Appeal: 8/10
The Final Analysis: 5/10
You've Got Me Running: 8/10
Sweeter As The Days Go By: 9/10
Talk To Me: 8/10
Good Feelings: 7/10
Rocker: 7/10