AMG Review of We'll Sing in the Sunshine

Stephen Thomas Erlewine
All Music Guide

Following a sojourn to film #Pete’s Dragon for Disney, Helen Reddy returned in 1979 with We’ll Sing in the Sunshine, another co-production from the king of L.A. weirdness, Kim Fowley. Here, Fowley teamed with veteran L.A. arranger Nick DeCaro instead of Sparks guitarist Earle Mankey, and the results are considerably slicker and redolent of the polyester lounge of the late ‘70s, filled with shiny strings and disco flirtations that all wind up sounding a bit like TV theme songs. There are some changes of pace -- everybody works up a pretty good head of steam on a rollicking cover of the Beatles’ “One After 909,” and the vaudevillian shuffle of the title track doesn’t fit with the rest -- but the rest of this is spangly soft rock, often fairly well-crafted but riding on its slick commercial sound, something that’s an appealing period artifac,t but not among Reddy’s best records.