Born to Be With You

Does not rock.

This sounds like Kenny G and Michael Bolton had a baby.

That is not a complement.

Some good songs here, but the cover of He’s Got the Whole World is kind of a jumpscare

At its worst a bit dull, but at best you could see why it inspired Bruce Springsteen.

Actually quite nice? Sounded like Father John Misty as times - which is 50ish years later. What a 75 banger.

esse é pra quem achava que o phil spector, além de péssima pessoa, era um bom produtor. esse aqui tá mal feito viu galera. ruim pra dar com pau

What I found interesting in Dion's biography was his membership in New York gangs as a teenager and the connection to the film "The Wanderers," which I recently saw again. I have roughly the same opinion of the album as he does. He distanced himself from it because it sounded like funeral music. A little too schmaltzy and oily. 2/5

This is the sort of music that may have well been on the radio when i was younger but is so inoffensively dull it failed to register

We coincidentally got this album the day before Dion released a biography and tie-in album The Rock ‘n’ Roll Philosopher. The longevity of some of the artists on this list is genuinely impressive - he released his first album with The Belmonts in 1959!

I was pleased to learn that this had been packaged with another album on Amazon Music and so to be true to the Generator, I only had to listen to the first 8 tracks. The question then became, would this be enjoyable enough that I would keep going?

No.

Nice voice, mostly fairly dull songs (I liked Good Lovin' Man).

2/5

I’d never heard of Dion or the album Born To Be With You before today, so I was looking forward to giving it a spin this morning.

I found it to be a really easy and enjoyable listen — the kind of album you can put on, sit back, and let wash over you. I even ended up listening to Streetheart straight after, as it’s bundled with this album on Apple Music.

While Born To Be With You doesn’t have any major standout tracks, it flows beautifully from start to finish. It’s produced by the vile Phil Spector — an unfortunate fact — but his signature “Wall of Sound” production style definitely adds to the record’s lush atmosphere. Dion’s voice really impressed me: soulful, reflective, and full of warmth. I’ll definitely be revisiting this one.

Favourite track: Born To Be With You – a lovely, heartfelt song.
Least favourite track: Make the Woman Love Me – a bit dated and slightly creepy.
Album artwork: A fairly standard cover, nothing remarkable.

Liked this way more than I expected to - it's big orchestral soul, saccharine soft rock emotions, totally bloated arrangements and maximalist production, but the melodies are there, the performance is solid and the mood is chilled out and fully relaxed; it just feels nice - a warm bath of album.

I’m at a 4.

There’s an immediately striking line on the Wikipedia page for this album: “On its completion in 1974, Dion effectively disowned the record, stating that the production made it sound like ‘funeral music’.” I think he’s got a point, although I do think it’s a little bit hyperbolic & carries a far more negative connotation that I got out of listening to this. Yes, this is a Phil Spector disasterclass at times, but I only found 3 of the tracks here to truly suffer from the wall of sound effect: the opener, “Born to Be with You”, “(He's Got) The Whole World in His Hands” & the closer, “Good Lovin' Man”. Even with the wall of sound bearing itself down on these tracks in a way that feels far too noticeable, they each have their own little issues.

“Born to Be With You” has all the potential in the world, but it just comes across as utterly plain. For as much as it tries to do, the production really holds it back. To my ears, it’s too long for what it is, spinning the wheels to a 7 minute runtime that doesn’t feel as satisfying as it could be. Past that, the instrumentation isn’t consistently rich enough to evoke the vibe it’s going for, even though Dion’s vocals meet the mark. It’s not his fault at all. It’s never really his fault at any point on this album; his vocals are STRONG, and often overcome some of the bad production choices to still make a good chunk of these tracks really nice.

“(He's Got) The Whole World in His Hands” is simply caked in reverb, to a point where it’s obnoxious. I like the vibe of the track, but I see exactly where Dion would call this thing “funeral music” – it’s got a weirdly ethereal vibe due to the reverb, but not in a wholly spiritual way like I’m sure Phil Spector may have intended. It just comes across as nearly culty. With a better producer in tow here, I think this track has just as much potential, but there’s just too much meddling involved.

“Good Lovin' Man” is honestly a fun track, and I like the 50s throwback style a lot here, but it’s just so overblown with the wall of sound that everything feels muddled, down to the backing choirs & instrumentation & even a good chunk of Dion’s higher registers. Under the hands of a better producer, this could be a super fun way to end the album, but with Phil’s hands on this thing, it just feels off.

As far as the other 5 tracks go (“Make the Woman Love Me”, “Your Own Back Yard”, “Only You Know”, “New York City Song”, & “In and Out of the Shadows”), I like them all a lot. Phil Spector takes a playbook out of how Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” uses a more subtle wall of sound (just go listen to the pre-chorus, you’ll hear what I mean), and it’s used to really strong effect. Honestly, a lot of those tracks feel very Elton-y, which is probably why I liked them. Granted, “In and Out of the Shadows” is HEAVY on the wall of sound, but since it blends much more with Dion’s more powerful vocals, the whole thing has a bombastic feel that makes it all work. “Only You Know” is probably my favorite one here; great lyricism about encouraging a friend, the instrumentation & vocals come through really nicely due to the more subtle wall of sound, and the percussion has some great highlights.

As a whole then, even if batting 5 out of 8 would only be a 62.5% on the grading scale, I do think the 3 tracks that got hit by the wall of sound in a bad way are still honestly not THAT bad, and they have their moments. They’re just ruined by Phil Spector – not the only thing he’d murder in the next 30 years. It’s a shame this is the only Dion album on the list, because I LOVE the tone of his voice, and he seems like someone I’d really enjoy. I’ll have to hunt down some more of his stuff. As far as this album goes, I feel fine with a 4. The best tracks here are REALLY strong to my ears, and since it’s only 35 minutes, none of the affected tracks bring down the album that badly. I do think the 2.62 average is far too low, and it may be just an overreaction to the first track plodding along the way it does. Did it need to be on the list? I dunno, maybe. I enjoyed it though, so that works for me.

Nicer than people say - but I won't be coming back to this record.

Maybe there's a reason (murderous) Phil Spector shelved this. This was ok, kind of generic pop, nothing new about it, not sure why on this list.

Born To Be With You is an album that is pretty good and got better the more i listened to it. I didn't really have any expectations as to how this would sound considering that this album is a pop album and that genre can have albums that sound very different from each other but it mainly does seem to go for a doo-wop sound. The songs themselves did sound pretty good and all had a nice vibe to them which i would always enjoy. This album wasn't all too long either so it never really felt like it was dragging on. It is a good album but i still feel that it's formula would go on to be improved by other bands like Primal Scream.
Best Song: Make The Woman Love Me
Worst Song: Born To Be With You

Your Own Back Yard stood out

Album is a good capture of overall seventies pop production to that point.

It’s fine but not especially memorable.

It turns out that this sort of easy listening music is not really my thing. Maybe its just this album, since there are some weird things with this one, but we'll get there. Firstly, I looked into Dion, and he seems to be mostly known for '50s and '60s Doo-Wop albums (I listened to some of it, this stuff is actually pretty fun), but on Born To Be With You, he slows things way down and focuses on writing heartfelt songs with some (admittedly) very nice vocals. However, this album is probably more well known for being produced by Beatles collaborator and genuine menace to society Phil Spector. While there are moments where his production *sorta* works here, he was a bizarre choice for an album like this, and it really doesn't do it for me. Most notably are songs where, to my ear, it really feels like Phil decides to assert himself, (He's Got) The Whole World In His Hands stands out in particular. It really feels like he just kinda brickwalled it, and while the result is interesting, almost psychedelic, it just is not what this album needed. I also sort of have an issue with a lot of the songs here on a sort of construction level. For the length and slow pacing of a lot of these songs, they just aren't strong enough to carry the album. There are moments that stand out, like I mentioned earlier, I like his vocals, and I think the sax parts on this are great. I also remember a lot of the lyrics being pretty interesting. This isn't enough to carry the album though, from what I've read, it seems that Dion himself has kind of disowned it. I didn't absolutely hate this, I just don't really see myself returning to it.

Pretty cool to have on in the background.

A collection of 20 b-side rejects.