1980 studio album by Boz Scaggs
Middle Man is the ninth studio album by Boz Scaggs, released by Columbia Records in 1980. Scaggs hired members of the band Toto as session musicians (as he did for Down Two Then Left and Silk Degrees) and shared songwriting credits with them, returning to the commercial, soul-influenced rock of the latter. It would take him eight years to release his following album Other Roads, again retaining the personnel of the three preceding it.
The album reached No. 8 in the Billboard 200 album chart, and two singles reached the Billboard Hot 100: "Breakdown Dead Ahead" at No. 15 and "Jojo" at No. 17.[2]
Reception
Writing for Smash Hits in 1980, David Hepworth described Middle Man as an "impeccably tasteful collection of sophisticated white soul" that was "useful as background music in the more sedate kind of nite spot". Acknowledging that the album was "well done", Hepworth noted that Scaggs' previous albums were "thrilling as well as perfectly formed". Hepworth went on to say that the album sounded as though "they designed the sleeve first and then made the record to go in it".[4] Interestingly, two cuts from the album, "Jojo" and "Breakdown Dead Ahead", landed higher on the Canadian charts than on any other international or US charts, indicating that Canadian audiences had embraced Scaggs' harder rock edge, diverging from slower ballads and hits such as "Look What You've Done To Me", which he deftly wrote in the same year, as a track for the movie Urban Cowboy.
AllMusic's retrospective review commented that the album "caps off the decade with equal nods to [Scaggs's] '70s hitmaking formulas and the newer, shinier production techniques of the coming decade." They made a point of noting the album's repeated imitation of then-popular fads, while at the same time, opining that these imitations were successful.[3]
Track listing
All songs written by David Foster and Boz Scaggs, except where noted.
| Title | Writer(s) |
|---|
| 1. | "Jojo" | Foster, David Lasley, Scaggs | 5:51 |
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| 2. | "Breakdown Dead Ahead" | | 4:33 |
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| 3. | "Simone" | | 5:05 |
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| 4. | "You Can Have Me Anytime" | | 4:56 |
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| 5. | "Middle Man" | | 4:51 |
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| 6. | "Do Like You Do in New York" | Scaggs | 3:44 |
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| 7. | "Angel You" | | 3:38 |
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| 8. | "Isn't It Time" | Scaggs | 4:53 |
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| 9. | "You Got Some Imagination" | Steve Lukather, Scaggs, Bill Schnee | 3:56 |
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| Total length: | 42:02 |
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