Chiming guitars, keyboards, piano and rhythm section combine before Anita’s quieter, much more subtle vocal enters. Soul Inspiration was written by Grammy Award winning songwriter Terry Britten and Graham Lyle, of Gallagher and Lyle. Powell’s arrangement is combined with Anita’s vocal, this is a potent combination, resulting in yet another great track from Anita. Guitars and keyboards melodically combine, their sounds reverberating behind Anita’s powerful vocal. Together, the play slowly and thoughtfully, with the piano, keyboards and chiming guitars at the heart of arrangement’s success. Behind her, the arrangement features a combination slow rhythm section, chiming guitars, piano and keyboards.
During this track, Anita demonstrates her vocal range, delivering the lyrics with a combination of power and emotion. Whatever It Takes To Make You Happy is a track that slowly, reveals wave after wave of beautiful music, which as the track unfolds, just gets so much better. Although quite different from Rapture, it still features the trademark vocals of Anita Baker. Like the opening track, both Anita and her band combine brilliantly on a track she cowrote with Joel Davis. Anita’s voice is laden with emotion and passion, with backing vocalists accompanying her later in the track. There’s a lushness to this slow, quite beautiful track.
Meanwhile, keyboards have joined the track, which has the piano at the heart of sound, ably assisted by percussion and the rhythm section. Immediately, this proves to be a fitting predecessor to Talk To Me, with Anita turning back the clock, remembering when she met her partner, and they embarked on their perfect love affair. Perfect Love Affair sees the piano add atmosphere and brief, bursts of drama to the introduction while the rhythm section, percussion and guitars accompany Anita on this slow track. If the rest of the album is as good as Talk To Me then this is going to be a magical musical journey. Greg Phillinganes on piano and the rest of this tight band take a welcome diversion into jazz territory, while Anita give’s an outstanding, emotive vocal. As the track progresses, her alto vocal grows in power and emotion, while a lovely piano led arrangement unfolds. Her vocal is slow, as she accentuates notes while she asks her partner to talk to her, share his problems and worries. It’s a piano led track, with the rhythm section, percussion and guitars combining with keyboards before Anita’s thoughtful vocal enters. It’s that album that I’ll now tell you about.Ĭompositions opens with Talk To Me which Anita cowrote with Michael Powell and Vernon Falls. On Compositions, Anita demonstrated not only her talents as a vocalist, but as a songwriter, writing four of the songs. After just four solo albums, Anita was one of the biggest soul singers of the time. Although the singles failed to match the success of Compositions, Anita Baker’s career was going from strength to strength. When Fairy Tales was released as the third single in 1991, it reached number eight in the US R&B Charts. Soul Inspiration, the second single of 1990, only reached sixteen in the US R&B Charts and seventy-two in the US Billboard 100. Although it reached number four in the US R&B Charts, it only reached number forty-four in the US Billboard 100. Talk To Me was the first single released from the album in 1990. Unlike the album, the singles released from the album weren’t as successful. The album reached number five in the US Billboard 200, was certified platinum and won Anita a Grammy Award for the Best Female R&B Performance at the 1991 Grammy Awards. Compositions was released back in June 1990, and featured four songs that Anita either wrote or co-wrote. He had produced Anita’s two previous platinum certified album.
Powell, who formed the Detroit based soul group Chapter 8, which Anita was the lead vocalist for. Like Rapture and Giving You the Best That I Got, it was produced by Michael J. This didn’t affect her popularity though. After listening to what is another of my favorite Anita Baker albums, I decided that this was a good album to write about, because it sees a slight change in Anita’s music, when a jazz influence was introduced to her music. Today, while I was listening to a number of albums, I came across my copy of Anita’s fourth album Compositions. I’ve long been a fan of Anita’s music, and have for some time, been meaning to write another article on Anita’s music. Some time ago, I wrote an article of Anita Baker’s seminal 1986 album Rapture, one of my favorite soul albums of the eighties.
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