Loss of Imagination
By Eric Grigs | July 31, 2020
I’m here to talk about righting a pop history wrong for Helen Reddy. That sentence isn’t as shocking or laughable as it would be in another time, because people today allow themselves to like things that are deeply uncool, just as long as they do it ironically. Although, I’m actually here to make a full-throated defense of Reddy’s last big studio album, 1983’s Imagination.
I discovered it doing research for a recent radio show, and ever since I’ve had it on repeat—begging it to give up all its secrets to me. Why is it such a perfect 80s pop confection and how could it possibly have been so passed over in its own time?
Sure, I understand it’s a schmaltzy product, but it fits in beautifully alongside the earnest, breezy early 80s soft pop that was dominating radio at the time, so you have to greet it with that type of listening ear. Collaborator Joe Wissert provides lush production on it, pushing Australian-American Reddy to branch out in unexpected ways. Particularly, the title track: a floating synth dream that Joe Viglione of AllMusic remarked “might as well be the Go-Gos or Missing Persons; it’s a really great new wave pop tune, served up on a vinyl 12” with and extended dance remix for good measure.” We are talking about Helen Reddy, right? The same Reddy that People magazine disparagingly called the “1970s Queen of Housewife Rock?” Yes. If I had one critique of the song, the chorus needs a better hook—but the verses are mesmerizing. The music captures an etherial, dreamy quality that’s hard to get right. Suddenly, steel drums are dropped in that shouldn’t work at all, but somehow they fit brilliantly with the soft pulsating vibrations of the synthesized beats.
There’s a video for it too, because Reddy realized MTV visuals were the next frontier in the early 80s. And to show just how much her MCA record label wasn’t behind the project, they allowed her daughter and a group of film student friends to helm it, on a budget of $15,000 that Reddy says she took a loan out to make. Looking at the finished product, it seems to fit with much of what the video channel was serving up then and should have done well, but I don’t recall seeing it rotation much.
At the time, changes in leadership at MCA resulted in new executives who didn’t really know how to market Reddy’s fresh material to her existing fan base. Reddy told an unfortunate story about the day of Imagination’s release where she went into a Tower Records store to see what kind of promotion the label was putting behind the album. She even ran into two songwriters of one of the album’s tracks, looking to purchase a copy. They searched for 15 minutes, not finding it. She recalled: “There were no store displays of any kind. It was not filed under New Releases. It was not to be found under my name in the pop female vocal section or any other category. My new album was finally located in the back of the store in a bin marked Nostalgia and filed under the letter R. It had been successfully buried.” Ouch.
During promotion for the album, she tired of reporters asking only about her divorce and contentious custody battle for her son. When she got the form letter stating MCA was dropping her, she wasn’t surprised. But it was the nail in the coffin for her music career. Soured on the industry, she decided to take a break from recording, one that lasted well into the 90s. For a time, she shifted to life on the theater stage, a place where she felt her ex-husband and ex-manager Jeff Wald presumably had little reach. The acrimony of the divorce and his music industry influence probably had a strong correlation to Reddy’s precipitous decline in promotion and caused lasting damage to her continued music legacy. Wald’s stake in Reddy’s future income may also have played a part in her deciding to step away from the recording mic instead of finding a home at another label. People quoted Reddy’s attorney who said: “Hell hath no fury like a husband who lost his meal ticket.”
After listening to this album with nearly 40 years distance, I can definitively say we were robbed of the future great 80s music Reddy would have certainly made throughout the decade.
Let’s consider some of the LP’s standouts. One of the things Reddy does best is sunny optimism, and “Looks Like Love” could brighten the darkest days. It is that particular type of early 80s charmer that has a lot in common with Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together,” and just as classic sounding. There’s the cheeky fun of “Handsome Dudes” (where Reddy tells us that beauty fades and she doesn’t want to be in a relationship with anyone prettier than she is), the reassuring love ballad of “Winner in your Eyes,” and the camp gravitas storytelling of “Guess You Had to Be There” that is every bit a match for Reba’s “Fancy.” And try not to be seduced by the punchy sax and bouncy beat of my personal favorite “Don’t Tell Me Tonight,” which would perfectly find a home on any TV Variety Musical Special of the 80s.
But the most egregious fault of the label is not spotting the biggest potential hit hiding in plain sight, closing out the album. One that Don Johnson would go on to score in the top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, just three years later in 1986. “Heartbeat”—itself a Wendy Waldman cover here—follows Waldman’s clipped intro vocals along with a booming chorus that is every bit as rocking as Johnson’s and the original. This is not your mother’s Helen Reddy. It adds piano to the drums and electric guitars, something that the others do not, giving it that peculiar 70s and 80s vibe that feels like a lost Elton John track from his peak output.
You should give Imagination a spin—but be forewarned—there’s one final indignity. Whoever uploaded this album to streaming services (and even digital downloads for purchase in the Apple store) just sent in a fairly sloppy vinyl transfer. You’ll hear pops of dust and static throughout, not a clean version from the masters. It’s a heartbreaking travesty, one more way the album has been carelessly tossed aside.
Yet listening to the album now, you can’t help but use your imagination to conjure up what the next, lost-to-pop-history Helen Reddy album could have been. At least we have this one.
Eric Grigs is a pop culture writer, artist, and co-host of the Pop Trash Podcast.