Leo Sayer

All the Best certainly lives up to its title, offering 17 of Leo Sayer's most popular pop efforts, including each of his Top 40 singles. Beginning with "The Show Must Go On," a frolicking vaudeville-type number with Russ Ballard playing banjo and a number four hit for Three Dog Night, the set entertainingly works its way through the years to reveal Sayer's adeptness at singing ballads and his overly effective pop melodramatics. The disco-flavored "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" was a number one hit for him in 1976, followed by the syrupy "When I Need You," which accomplished the same feat only four months later. Both singles came from Endless Flight, a platinum seller that also yielded a minor hit with "How Much Love," and would prove to be Sayer's strongest album.

Richard Perry's 1978 production of the self-titled Leo Sayer album is one of the artist's most serious and heartfelt, though it only generated a minor hit in the cover of the Boudleau Bryant/Felice Bryant tune "Raining in My Heart." With Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham on electric guitar, Waddy Wachtel on slide guitar, and Ben Benay on acoustic, the performance and production of that particular song offers much on an album that is equally impressive. James Brown/Russell Smith's "Dancing the Night Away," with David Lindley's important and unobtrusive fiddle and steel guitar, and "Stormy Weather," the Tom Snow/Leo Sayer collaboration which opens the album, all work in unison, providing evidence that Sayer had superstardom just within his grasp.

"Thunder in My Heart" and "Easy to Love" barely nicked the Top 40, and of his eight chart hits from 1975 to 1981, these two were the weakest, but this disco album by the quirky singer, once again produced by Richard Perry, is listenable and has more than its share of good players. Olivia Newton-John songwriter Tom Snow co-wrote the title track with Sayer, while Albert Hammond helped out on the second song and follow-up hit. Half of the ten songs are Snow co-writes, with Hammond, Michael Omartian, Bruce Roberts, and others all contributing. The second Hammond/Sayer title, "I Want You Back," is a pleasant album track, but with Omartian on piano, Jeff Porcaro on drums, and Larry Carlton on guitar, Perry could just put the session on automatic pilot.

Leo Sayer is a British-born singer-songwriter musician, and entertainer whose singing career has spanned four decades. Sayer launched his career in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s, and became a top singles and album act on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1970s. His first seven hit singles in the United Kingdom all reached the Top 10 – a feat first registered by his first manager, Adam Faith. His songs have been sung by other notable artists.

The Show Must Go On offers a definitive collection of Sayer's 1970s bubbly dance-pop hits like "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing," "When I Need You," and "More Than I Can Say." A number of rare singles are also included, as is the unreleased cut "Tonight the Sky's About to Cry".

2018 three CD collection. Leo Sayer, in a career spanning 45 years, has sold more than 80 million records worldwide. The Gold Collection, which Leo personally compiled and sequenced, is a 54-track set. It delves into Leo's deep and rich catalog, delivering all of his UK Top 30 hits, including 11 Top 10s and his two UK #1's 'When I Need You' and 'Thunder In My Heart Again', the latter with Meck and the US #1 (UK #2) hit 'You Make Me Feel Like Dancing'. The Gold Collection also includes many key album tracks from the early part of his career, many of which were written/composed by other major artists of the time, as well as a number of recordings written for him by other international singer/songwriters. All in all, this is a fantastic collection of his classic recordings that will remind everyone that Leo Sayer is one of the UK's great singer/songwriters of all time.