The Album
Unknown Soldier: You've often mentioned that this is one of your favourite albums from the band, any obvious reason for that?
Anteater: I think it's their best overall AOR recording. There's almost no weak points on it, which would make it the first since the debut in that regard.
Anteater: It's more balanced than
Isolation, more diverse than
IV, and like you mentioned it's a step up from
Fahrenheit in a lot of ways too.
Unknown Soldier: For me it's a difficult album for a listener to adjust to, not because it's complex or anything, but rather it has great depth that's not evidently obvious. For example it's weakest part imo is actually with its opening 4 songs, which not only include its two main singles but also include two very other generic tracks, but it's from there that it slowly drifts into being something else and it's quite a journey as we'll explain.
Unknown Soldier: It's all strange really as the first few tracks on most albums are usually among its strongest and set the stall out as it were.
Anteater: They put all the most "obvious" material out front
Unknown Soldier: It's also a long album for its time as well, but this was 1988 and albums were getting longer.
Anteater: I think there were other factors too, as the band was pretty comfortable with Joseph as lead vocalist by this point
Unknown Soldier: Well he took the lion's share of the vocals here.
Anteater: Well yeah, and whatever band dynamics they initially established had gone up a few notches. The only problem, like you mentioned, was trying to sell the end product to a public who was supposedly disinterested in AOR
Anteater: But from what I understand the problem in this case had more to do with Columbia not promoting
The Seventh One and less to do with overall public perception.
Anteater: But like I said, I think as an AOR record its their best of the 80's and probably the 2nd best album we've spotlighted so far next to the self-titled.
Unknown Soldier: Well as you know
Isolation will always be the best for me (cool)
Anteater: It's a hard call between
The Seventh One and
Isolation for me
Unknown Soldier: But seriously I do remember at the time, that band wanted to make a big splash with this album, but as you said the label weren't on the same wavelength as the band.
Side 1
Anteater: But anyway, opening single
'Pamela' wasn't a bad way to start things off.
Unknown Soldier: In "Pamela" we find a song that is not only a strong opener, but sounds immediately better than any of the singles off the previous album.
Anteater: 'Fahrenheit' had some really strong single material: the problem was the label didn't use any of them as lead singles, so it was a wasted opportunity
Unknown Soldier: The video also uses that 'pleasant looking studio environment' from the time as well for the Pamela video which I liked back then.
Anteater: But in this case, 'Pamela' is definititive Toto. I don't care too much for the video, but it has an excellent groove.
Unknown Soldier: It has a fantastic groove and Mike Porcaro moves with that groove as he often did RIP.
Unknown Soldier: The song's a pure single and that's the best that can be said about it and of course showcases the vocals of JW.
Anteater: It has a nice brassy sheen to it too and it also shows off another facet of the album from the get-go: the mix has a lot of clarity, making it one of the best "sounding" albums in their whole catalog
Unknown Soldier: ..... and sadly one of the last times that we would see Jeff Porcaro in a Toto video as well.
Unknown Soldier: Yes it has great clarity to it, now we move onto
"You Got Me"
Anteater: I'm assuming this one of the "generic" sounding tracks to you, but I like it a lot. Very hi-tech, and a lottttt better than their previous experiment in this area, the title track from 'Fahrenheit'
Unknown Soldier: Generic and somewhat reptitive, when I first heard it I thought the album was going to be another
Fahrenheit all over again, but I guess I'm also being quite hard on it too.
Anteater: Joseph Williams was always a big Michael Jackson aficionado, so this song is that element coming out in his songwriting. Paich co-wrote it if I recall too.
Unknown Soldier: You notice this in his style especially in his movement which is very akin to Jackson at times.
Anteater: Toto were basically Michael Jackson's backing band in the first half of the 80's anyway, so I'm not surprised to see that sort of thing pop back up even after the association ended.
Unknown Soldier: Next is
"Anna" and for me it's just a case of getting the bland Steve Lukather ballad out of the way quickly here.
Anteater: I actually think it's one of Lukather's better ballads, a co-write with Westcoast session man Randy Goodrum, but the predictability factor is high certainly.
Unknown Soldier: Ok we have some differences on the last two songs a rarity really!
Anteater: It's all about finesse for me, none of the ballad material on 'Fahreneheit' really worked for me, but 'Anna' does for some reason. The arrangement has an extra "something"
Unknown Soldier: I understand that and kind of know the type of thing that you look for now.
Anteater: Like you though, I find it interesting that the weakest material on
The Seventh One is on side one and all the best stuff comes after.
Unknown Soldier: Next track is the other single
"Stop Loving You"
Anteater: I like this one quite a bit
Unknown Soldier: Which seems to start off with a blatant "Africa" tinge to it.
Anteater: It's their way of winking knowingly at the listener lol, it has a similar vibe, but I like the energy and hook here a lot more than 'Africa'. Plus Jon Anderson of Yes is on backing vocals
Unknown Soldier: Again I don't particuarly like it, it's too 'happy' sounding for me and hell I didn't know that Jon Anderson was backing on it.
Unknown Soldier: By now I'd be switching off from this album, but as I know what's to come............
Anteater: Four songs in and none of them are weak though
Anteater: Next is
'Mushanga' and this is the one that reminds me the most of 'Africa' funnily enough.
Unknown Soldier: 1 good, 1 average and 2 misses for me.
Unknown Soldier: Now "Mushanga" is the oddest way to transform somebody's opinion about an album, because it did with me.
Anteater: It's a surprisingly lyrical song
Unknown Soldier: It's kind of a nice low-key track that rides you on a gentle wave to the really strong material that's coming up.
Unknown Soldier: Yes it has nice lyrics to it.
Anteater: Jeff Porcaro was the main writer here, and there's even a flamenco guitar solo courtesy of Lukather
Unknown Soldier: He always wrote on some of the band's most interesting material and yes that flamenco guitar is the great surprise that works and the track also has that calypso beat as well.
Anteater: Makes me wish Jeff had gotten to do more writing during his "time" with the band
Anteater: You know that Jeff played on literally several thousand albums before 1992 right?
Anteater: The guy had been exposed to so many different genres and artists during his time in the industry its kind of mindboggling
Unknown Soldier: Hell yer, he's on like most Steely Dan albums, if you can find him through all the credits.
Anteater: Yeah, that was where he got started was with "the Dan"
Anteater: Anyway, onward to the excellent
'Stay Away' and we're back in high octane AOR territory now
Unknown Soldier: Now you know I'm going to dig "Stay Away" it's just my kind of thing and contrasts superbly with the previous song.
Anteater: Well, I'll just go ahead and say that I consider side 2 of
The Seventh One to be pretty darn fantastic.
Anteater: I like Side A fine of course, but its like they took all the best material and just lined them up like dominos, starting from 'Mushanga'
Anteater: Lukather wrote this one, and his guitar tone here is absolutely killer, almost like a buzzsaw
Unknown Soldier: It's strength is that it's a 5.30 mins song
Unknown Soldier: That keeps it going all the way and never runs out of steam.
Anteater: I heard it was a song they originally wrote for Cher, but Jeff and Joseph pushed to keep it for
The Seventh One.
Unknown Soldier: It would be interesting to hear Cher sing it.
Anteater: So they changed the lyrics a bit, lengthened the arrangement and thus we get a surprisingly bluesy AOR rocker