A HARD HABIT TO BREAK

I have a new blog obsession. I don't love Music Junkie just because it reviews artists as varied as Coldplay, ABC, Sophie Ellis Bextor and all the perfunctory R&B hitmakers of the day. Or because it gives props to blasts from the past as unexpected as Irene Cara, Bernadette Cooper and Evelyn King. I love it because it posted the fabulous cover above from Shannon's 1986 album, Love Goes All The Way. To be honest, I never knew even knew that the "Let The Music Play" singer made it past her sophomore slump. Thanks for the tip, Music Junkie. Aspiring divas (and Mariah Carey), take note. This is how you do it.

Shannon will always have a special place in my heart because she was one of the performers at my first concert, which took place at Disney World in the mid-'80s. (My folks, being ultra-religious, thought concerts were the devil's playground and didn't ease up on their live-music ban until I was well into my teens). Shannon was in her (short-lived) commercial prime at the time, as were New Edition, who were also on the bill. The other headliners, Cheap Trick, were still a few years away from their second wind, which blew in with hurricane-strength gusts in 1988, thanks to the beyond-sappy chart-topping ballad "The Flame."

Now I do my part to prop up the great, underrated Shannon. Here's a shoulda-been-a-smash from her 1983 debut long player, Let The Music Play.

DOWNLOAD "Give Me Tonight"