Forever More (Love Songs, Hits, and Duets), by James Ingram

Released in 1999, this is a very strange sort of compilation. There are a great many compilations by artists that focus on one of the three elements that this album is made from. Greatest Hits albums are so ubiquitous among legacy artists that some artists have more compilation albums than actual studio releases, and a large percentage of artists and groups who have even slight popular success end up with at least one or more of them, especially if Greatest Hits albums can be expanded to include Best of or Singles compilations, which are related but slightly different genera. Similarly, it is not uncommon for artists of James Ingram’s stature to have duets albums or collections of love songs. What is more unusual is trying to do all of these things in the same album, and it is not exactly clear what James Ingram is doing by conflating these three concepts together into one compilation. To what extent is a disproportionate amount of his hits made up of love songs? There are a great many artist whose most popular songs are romantic in nature, especially in the sort of lane that Ingram occupies as an artist. To what extent is it unusual that James Ingram’s career is known so much for duets? A substantial portion of artists are well-known for collaborations and, as noted above, this is by no means unheard of for artists to have collaborative albums. What is unusual, if not entirely unique, is to have an album that tries to do three things at once, to put together a set of songs that is not entirely made up of hits but has many of them, is not entirely duets but has a lot of them, and is not entirely made up of love songs but is full of them. Let us explore further.

Taking this album as a whole, it is made up of 14 tracks. First comes the title track of sorts, Forever More (I’ll Be The One), which is a competent if not at all popular love song featuring some smooth jazz piano work by John Tesh (2/3). This is followed by a distinctive and pleasant version of I Believe I Can fly, which was a hit for R. Kelly in the late 1990’s around the time this album was being recorded but was not a hit for James Ingram (2/3 if it is considered a song of self-love). Baby Come To Me (featuring Patti Austin) was a smash hit for Ingram in the 1980s, and is a classic quiet storm love balled duet (3/3). Ingram follows this song up with two more songs that are certainly decent and competent songs but again, were not in any way hit singles, in “I Believe In Those Love Songs” and “Everything Must Change” (2/3). This is followed by a moderate hit duet that Ingram recorded with Michael McDonald in “Yah Mo Be There” (3/3). After this comes another obscure but tuneful song in “No Need To Say Goodbye,” the second time a song with this title has come across in a review of mine and not quite as a good as the other one (1/3). After this comes “Just Once,” which was definitely a hit love song for Ingram and deserving of its placement here (2/3), in a new version (it would have been 3/3 in its original context with Quincy Jones). “Wish You Were Here” (featuring Nancy Wilson of Heart fame) is another lovely but not very familiar love song (2/3). One of Ingram’s first songs comes after this, a song that is solo credited to him here as a new version of an earlier hit from a Quincy Jones producer album in “One Hundred Ways.” (2/3 as a solo version, the original credited to Quincy Jones f/James Ingram would have been a 3/3). This is followed by “My Funny Valentine,” which was certainly a hit long ago and is a part of the canonical pop repertoire (2/3?) but not a duet. This is followed by “Somewhere Out There” (featuring Linda Ronstadt), which was a massive hit love song duet (3/3), and my first ever favorite song when I was a child, about which I have blogged about before. The penultimate song of the album is another one of Ingram’s classic hits in “I Don’t Have The Heart” (2/3), while the album as a whole closes with a tuneful but obscure duet with Dolly Parton in “The Day I Fall In Love” (2/3).

This album leaves this reviewer both pleased and slightly confused. Why does this album exist? Who is responsible for it? This album is full of tuneful songs, to be sure, but it falls between the categories it illuminates. It includes a certain amount of hits, to be sure, but mostly in new versions and not in the original hit versions, and so it isn’t really a greatest hits compilation. It includes some of Ingram’s duets, but by no means all of his deeply fragmented collaborative work which mostly appears on other people’s projects and not his own. Some of the songs are not really love songs, but are tunes that demonstrate Ingram’s trademark emotional restraint regardless of the precise register, and even if one defines love songs broadly the songs include understated self-confidence (“I Believe I Can Fly”), diffident recognition of an inability to love as much as is desired (“I Don’t Have The Heart”), transactional approaches to a repentant lover (“One Hundred Ways”) as well as family/friendship love (“Somewhere Out There,” from An American Tail). Whole categories of James Ingram’s work are minimized or missing here, including his noted soundtrack work (like the missing City Slickers contribution “Where Did My Heart Go?”), and even when included (like “Somewhere Out There”) are not highlighted. If this is a pleasant album to listen to, it is certainly not a coherent or successful album and it is probably less than the sum of its admittedly pleasant and tuneful parts.