I searched for “Walk a Fine Line” for years, and I finally bought a vinyl version a couple of years ago. I was really disappointed, though. Pretty standard fare, there's no sign of the David Foster “magic” I was half expecting after reading all kinds of glowing reviews on these various Westcoast pages that exist on the web.

Roughly speaking, his work in the 1980s was a result of the collaborative effort between relatively faceless but (usually) talented men like John Parr (not necessarily a talented man), Chicago, Air Supply, Tubes, Jay Graydon, Richard Page,etc. whereas his work in the 1990s was little more than a generic instrumental setup for divas and boybands, performed exclusively by him and his Synclavier in his personal studio adjoining his living room, with two bars of guitar playing by Michael Thompson and Dean Parks thrown in for good measure.

I searched for “Walk a Fine Line” for years, and I finally bought a vinyl version a couple of years ago. I was really disappointed, though. Pretty standard fare, there's no sign of the David Foster “magic” I was half expecting after reading all kinds of glowing reviews on these various Westcoast pages that exist on the web.

Roughly speaking, his work in the 1980s was a result of the collaborative effort between relatively faceless but (usually) talented men like John Parr (not necessarily a talented man), Chicago, Air Supply, Tubes, Jay Graydon, Richard Page,etc. whereas his work in the 1990s was little more than a generic instrumental setup for divas and boybands, performed exclusively by him and his Synclavier in his personal studio adjoining his living room, with two bars of guitar playing by Michael Thompson and Dean Parks thrown in for good measure.

Meanwhile, I have to ask: granted, the 80s are probably Foster's most lucrative period, but at the same time, it seems (to me, at least) his style became one of sameness and repetition. Like you said, the Anka / Cetera track sounds like a lost Chicago track, although I think it would fit on 18 or 19 as well as 17… and on those wretched Peter Cetera solo discs, too. My question then, before you finish your Mediterranean beverage o' choice, is do you think this is one of the symptomatic problems with a lot of the balladry of the 80s, or was it more of a deliberate style choice that sets the 80s apart from, well, not most of the 90s, and not a lot of the current decade? I'm not quite stepping to the diving board and asking if you think Foster ruined popular music, because I can point to a lot of other culprits (Diane Warren, I am sternly pointing at you), but do you suppose it was his success that caused him to deviate very little from The Foster Formula and thus created a homogeneity of the better-selling madrigals of the latter-day divas and troubadours?