Folk-pop singer/songwriter
Stephen Bishop has bounced around from one record label to another, but he had his greatest success on the
ABC label in the mid-'70s when he scored the Top 40
pop hits
"Save It for a Rainy Day" and
"On and On." In fact, his two
ABC LPs,
Careless (1977) and the gold-certified
Bish (1978), are his only ones to sell well enough to make the charts.
ABC was absorbed into
MCA, which is now part of
Universal, the major label responsible for the
20th Century Masters/The Millennium Collection series of discount-priced best-of compilations, and the
Bishop number draws heavily from those two albums, which provide nine of the 12 tracks. Unusually for the series, however, the compilers have licensed a track from outside
Universal,
Bishop's chart-topping
adult contemporary hit
"It Might Be You," the theme from the 1983 movie
Tootsie, which is controlled by
Warner Brothers Records. With that inclusion, all of
Bishop's Top 40
pop hits are featured, although a handful of other
adult contemporary hits, including
"Unfaithfully Yours (One Love)" and
"Walking on Air," are missing. Still, this is the
Bishop most listeners remember, with his wispy tenor, shading into a falsetto, singing songs of romantic disappointment that boast strong hooks.
Bishop's theme for
National Lampoon's Animal House, sung in falsetto and in a 1950s
doo wop style, is uncharacteristic but enjoyable, while his own version of his song
"Separate Lives," a hit for
Phil Collins and
Marilyn Martin, is just about unrecognizable in its voice-and-acoustic-guitar arrangement, but sensitively performed. This is a good album for anyone who heard
"On and On" on the radio, liked it, and wondered if its singer had more like it. He does. ~ William Ruhlmann
![Supernatural [Legacy Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0888837149822_p0_v4_s90x140.jpg "Supernatural [Legacy Edition]")
![Greatest Hits [Arista]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0078221894029_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Greatest Hits [Arista]")
