Barry Manilow - If I Should Love Again / Summer Of '78 (Reissue, Remastered) (2006)

Import only two-disc coupling of his 1981 album 'If I Should Love Again' and his '96 album, Summer of '78. The latter is out-of-print in the US. Barry Manilow decided to follow the success of singing with the big bands with an album saluting another great lost era, The Summer of '78. Even on the newly-written title song, it's never quite clear why Manilow chose to single out the summer of 1978 out of the entire decade after all, the album is comprised of songs written throughout the '70s but the exact reason doesn't matter: as much as its predecessor, this is an exercise in nostalgia, pure and simple. Of course, it's very entertaining nostalgia, as Manilow has chosen soft-rock songs (Dan Hill's 'Sometimes When We Touch', Leo Sayer's 'When I Need You', Bob Seger's 'We've Got Tonight' that perfectly suit his style. The Summer of '78 is a perfectly executed and entertaining slice of nostalgia. BMG. 2006.