Alex Henderson

Cheryl Lynn

In Love

When Columbia Records released Cheryl Lynn’s second album, In Love, in 1979, the Los Angeles native had a lot to live up to. Her 1978 smash “Got to Be Real” had become one of the definitive anthems of the Disco Era, reaching #1 on Billboard’s R&B singles chart and #12 on Billboard’s pop singles chart. On top of that, “Star Love” (another single from Lynn’s self-titled debut album of 1978) was a #16 R&B hit in Billboard. So Columbia had high hopes for In Love. But while the Cheryl Lynn album made it to #5 on Billboard’s R&B albums chart and sold more than one million copies in the United States alone, In Love stalled at #47 on that chart.

Yet if In Love found Lynn (who turned 22 in 1979) experiencing a touch of the sophomore curse on a commercial level, her hardcore fans found this underrated album to be quite solid on a creative and artistic level. And the person who did the most to help Lynn make In Love a creative success was Barry Blue, who produced her sophomore album in its entirety.

Lynn’s first album had been produced by songwriter David Paich (of the million-selling pop-rock/arena rock/adult contemporary band Toto) and his father Marty Paich (who died of cancer in 1995). Lynn, in fact, contributed background vocals to Toto’s 1978 hit “Georgy Porgy,” helping that song reach #18 on Billboard’s R&B singles chart (which was unusual for a band that was more closely identified with pop-rock than R&B). But instead of reuniting with David & Marty Paich for In Love, Lynn joined forces with London native Blue—which made perfect sense given his impressive track record. In 1979, the British producer, songwriter and singer was well-respected in soul, funk and disco circles thanks to his work with the London-based band Heatwave, whose Blue-produced singles “Boogie Nights,” “The Groove Line” and “Always and Forever” had been major hits in both the U.K. and the United States. And much like the two albums Blue produced for Heatwave (1977’s Too Hot to Handle and 1978’s Central Heating), In Love has soul and funk appeal as well as disco appeal.

Although In Love didn’t contain any R&B radio blockbusters like “Got to Be Real,” it did contain the club hit “Keep It Hot” (a #12 dance single in Billboard and a song that Lynn co-wrote) as well as the funky, exuberant single “I’ve Got Faith in You” (which was written by singer Bobby Caldwell of “What You Won’t Do for Love” fame and made it to #41 on Billboard’s R&B singles chart). Dance clubs, more than commercial radio, took notice of In Love, and much of this album is obviously aimed at the dance floor. But the disco one hears on exuberant grooves such as “Love Bomb” (which Blue co-wrote), “Feel It” and “Hide It Away” is disco-soul rather than the European disco that was quite popular in the late 1970s. In Love is an album that, stylistically, has a lot more in common with artists like Sylvester, Linda Clifford, Gloria Gaynor, Double Exposure, the Trammps and Loleatta Holloway than it does with the Euro-disco of Love & Kisses, Cerrone, the Munich Machine, Amanda Lear and Silver Convention. Lynn never forgets disco’s soul roots on this album. 

The soul factor is equally strong on the medium-tempo “Chances” (a Lynn original) and two quiet storm ballads: “Don’t Let It Fade Away” and the title track. FunkyTownGrooves’ expanded edition of In Love contains three bonus tracks, including a remix of “Keep It Hot” and abridged versions of the title song and “Feel It.”  

These days, major labels are quick to drop artists if an album doesn’t perform as well as they would like commercially. But back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was a different world. Major labels, as a rule, were more forgiving back then, and they were more likely to view an artist as a long-term investment. If a major label truly believed in an artist, they were in it for the long haul. So Lynn’s relationship with Columbia Records continued after In Love, and the early to mid-1980s proved to be a good time for her commercially thanks to major hits that included 1981’s Ray Parker, Jr.-produced “Shake It Up Tonight” and 1983’s “Encore” (a #1 R&B smash that was written and produced by the prolific team of Jimmy Jam & Terri Lewis, two ex-members of The Time who came out of Prince’s Minneapolis school of funk-rock). Lynn’s remake of the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell hit “If This World Were Mine” (an inspired male/female duet with the late Luther Vandross) went down in history as one of the finest R&B ballad performances of 1982. In fact, “If This World Were Mine” was actually a bigger hit for Lynn and Vandross (the top romantic male R&B singer of the 1980s) than it was for Gaye and Terrell.

Lynn turned 56 on March 11, 2013, and recordings she made 30 or 35 years ago have withstood the test of time. “Got to Be Real,” which was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame in 2005, has been sampled by countless hip-hop, urban contemporary and dance-pop artists. Japanese pop star Koda Kumi covered “Got to Be Real” in 2010, and the song has been a crowd-pleaser during Kumi’s live performances—which is saying a lot when one considers that most of Kumi’s fans weren’t even born when Lynn co-wrote and recorded that 1978 smash.

Truth be told, disco never died and never really went out of style; rather, disco changed its name to dance music, continued to evolve and diversify, and gave us a variety of styles that have included deep house, hi-NRG and Latin freestyle. Clearly, Lynn is among the veteran artists whose contributions to disco haven’t been forgotten, and In Love serves as a reminder of the fact that the Californian brought plenty of soul and funk to disco fever back in 1979.

—Alex Henderson, March 2013

Alex Henderson’s work has appeared in Billboard, Spin, Creem, The L.A. Weekly, JazzTimes, Jazziz, AlterNet, Cash Box, HITS, CD Review, Skin Two, Black Beat, The Pasadena Weekly, Black Radio Exclusive (BRE), Music Connection, Latin Style, The New York City Jazz Record and many other well known publications. Henderson (alexvhenderson.com) has also contributed several thousand CD reviews to The All Music Guide’s popular website and series of music reference books.