1975's Survivor by master songwriter Barry Mann is the album Kenny Rogers never made. It sounds like a Kenny Rogers album, it looks like a David Pomeranz album, it has a cast of thousands, well, not thousands, but for a recording with Spanky McFarlane, Jerry Yester, Captain & Tennille, songs by Mann & Weil, production by Mann, Terry Melcher and "I Write the Songs" Bruce Johnston and others, the result is a good record that should have been great; a disc with the same flaws of 1980s self-titled release on Casablanca.