| It's as easy
to see why radio listeners loved Toto as it is to see why critics
hated them. Toto's sessionman rock studio chops allowed them
to play any current pop style at the drop of a hi-hat: one minute
prog-rock, the next hard rock, the next funky R&B. It all sounded
great, but it also implied that music-making took craft rather
than inspiration and that the musical barriers critics like
to erect were arbitrary.
Then, too, Toto's timing couldn't
have been much worse. They rode in in the middle of the punk/new
wave with its D.I.Y. aesthetic, and their sheer competence was
an affront. Of course, there's always been an alternate history
of popular music not available to rock critics (it's written
in record stores and concert halls and on the radio), and in
that story, Toto was a smash.
Singles like "I'll Supply the
Love" and "Georgy Porgy" (featuring Cheryl Lynn) made the charts,
and "Hold the Line" hit the Top Ten and went gold. The members
of Toto had already influenced the course of '70s popular music
by playing on half the albums that came out of L.A. All they
were doing with this album was going public.
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