Fitting that the week my youngest son graduates from high school, Friday Night Jukebox is featuring a tune from the year I graduated....
The Babys formed in London, England in 1974 and a mere two years later had released their first album. Though the band had a couple of top forty hits and developed a good reputation for their live shows, their disappointment at not having more commercial success drove the band to an early demise, and they broke up in 1981. For their career, The Babys released six albums and nine singles. Lead singer John Waite went on to have a #1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 as a solo artist, and with three other members of The Babys formed the supergroup Bad English (which also had a number one hit in America). In 2013 two original members of The Babys reformed the band and they continue to perform, having released their last album in 2014.
Fun Fact: The Babys featured a backing vocal group known as The Babettes, which contained singers from gospel icon Andrae Crouch's backing band The Disciples.
"Isn't It Time" was the first single released from their 1977 album Broken Hearts. The single was the first of two for The Babys to peak at #13 (with a bullet!) in the United States (it did hit number one in Australia--so many cools kids Down Under!), while the album reached #34 on the Billboard 200.
In the hands of many, "Isn't It Time" could have been just another love ballad (and to some it might still be....), but The Babys took the song one step beyond by incorporating the best of the 70's with the best of gospel. Accompanied by a stark piano, Waite opens with a sultry confession before The Babettes (and the rest of the band) kick in with some good old-fashioned rock and roll. The back and forth between Waite and The Babettes for the rest of the song--with an assist from the drums--really makes the song a cut (so to speak) above the normal fare, though I freely admit that being one whose formative music years were spent in the seventies might help a bit, too.
Lyric Sheet: "I've finally found the answers/To the questions that keep going through my mind/Hey babe!/Isn't it time?...
Enjoy:
Republican = Traitor
Peace,
emaycee
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