Hits! by Boz Scaggs (Vinyl record album review)

Record basics

Album name: Hits!

Artist name: Boz Scaggs

Year: 1980

Number of discs: one

Label: Columbia Records

Collection: Selman

Distinguishing characteristics:

Scratched into side one of LP: (H-TR) PAL-36841 G2B G1

Scratched into side two of LP: G1 PBL-36841 G2A

Buy it on Amazon: $5.00

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have no idea who Boz Scaggs is, but I’m at least 70% certain that he’s not Ricky Skaggs.

What I expected

I don’t know! His outfit looks a bit new wave, but 1980 would be quite early for that.

What it was actually like

So it turns out that I actually had heard of Boz Scaggs before today, when I reviewed the Urban Cowboy soundtrack a couple of months ago. Here’s part of what I wrote then:

I thought that Love the World Away by Kenny Rogers, an easy listening song, would certainly be the worst on the record, but that was until I heard Look What You’ve Done to Me by Boz Scaggs. That was in fact easily the record’s worst song and one of the worst I’ve ever heard. “Easy listening” would not even begin to describe it, but “soporific” does, and if I had been listening on a digital format, there’s a 100% chance that I would have skipped this song after 30 seconds or so.

Sure enough, Look What You’ve Done to Me was also included on Hits!, and it was every bit as terrible today as it was then (and I find it perplexing that this song could ever have been considered good enough to go on a movie soundtrack, let alone a “hits” record; maybe they meant hits on the back of the head). It was not, however, the worst song on this record. That was You Can Have Me Anytime, which was in a similar style and even more awful. And We’re All Alone was also similarly bad.

Miss Sun and Lowdown were both disco, though the latter was more jazzy than the former.

Dinah Flo and You Make It So Hard (to Say No) were both soul, and the latter was ok, except for the horns.

Jojo was easy listening with an offensively bad saxophone solo.

Breakdown Dead Ahead was rock, with a guitar solo.

Lido Shuffle was blues rock, with some kind of synthesizer making techno at the end.

I strongly disliked this record and Boz Scaggs, but here’s some good news: he’s no Ricky Skaggs!

Grade

1/5: horrible enough that I couldn’t make it through