David Essex - Silver Dream Racer (1980)

The soundtrack to a fairly dreadful movie about motorbike racing, Silver Dream Racer nevertheless brought David Essex yet another major British hit, as the title track soared to number four, even as the album itself bombed. And almost deservedly so. Silver Dream Racer is not Essex's finest hour; indeed, tracks like "Suzuki Warlord," "When I'm Dancing," and the positively mawkish "I Think I'll Always Love You" suggest that Essex himself was not especially enamored with the film, and simply wrote the first ditties that came into his head while he watched the rushes. At the same time, however, there is a rush of energy to the project that at least hints at the movie's intentions, and if the title track itself isn't quite the British answer to "Born to Be Wild" (Chris Spedding's "Motorbikin'" pips it to that post), at least the thought was there.~Review by Dave Thompson