Teena Marie - It Must Be Magic
#196
By Brian San Marco
May 14 1981
Teena Marie
It Must Be Magic
Genre: Post-disco Eighties pop
Allen’s Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Brian’s Rating: 2 out of 5 stars – Overcomplicated, like this review.
Highlights: ummm….
It Must be Magic
This is very interesting to me. I remember Teen Maria from the mid-eighties pop hit “Lovergirl”. It was a good polished Top 40 offering. I was a kid, it’s what I knew.
Little did I know, Teena Marie had been on the scene for a while and 1981 once again proves to be a transitional period in music. This album demonstrates that to a fault.
Lost somewhere between disco and funk-pop, “It Must Be Magic” finds itself in an awkward situation and isn’t quite sure what it wants to be and where it wants to go. This seems clear to me not only in the overall record, but within each song as well. From the simply trite, disconnected lyrics, to the really good, but disconnected band, to the poor vocal decisions of Teena herself.
To be clear, it’s not all bad. The title track grooves and makes you want to move. The band is top notch -- but then she sings. Don’t get me wrong, she can SING, no doubt. But the vocals on the recording seem disconnected from the rest of the band – hot in the mix as the lingo goes. And here is the transition: funk pop music started to change with the introduction of keyboards and lifting the vocals above the mix, and here, intermeshed with a full funk band with the smokin’ bass and horns. It just doesn’t mix well, in my view. She would find her sound later in her career.
Track 2 “Revolution” is similar to the first, just not as good a song.
From there, record nose dives. Complex where it doesn’t need to be, and empty where it needs a little more. The trite “love” lyrics continue on and I don’t get Teena’s decision on vocal inflection and tone. It’s weird. It gets weirder and more with more ballads with funk, and live tracks?! Add, preaching to audiences and self-aggrandizing. Ugh! Who’s responsible for this?
Teena Marie! Songwriter, arranger, producer. She is responsible. At least she hired a great band.
https://open.spotify.com/album/0ROB2BCrsG8kODFK5mxSf8?si=paVq-QN2S1uG0mwhOZaiFw
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