Diana Ross: Ross : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Considering that The Wiz will almost certainly catapult Diana Ross' career even higher into the stratosphere, it's a shame that Ross, released to coincide with the film, isn't a blockbuster but a hodgepodge of different styles, different producers. One cut, the Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson-produced "Reach Out, I'll Be There," even appeared on an earlier LP.

Ross is notable solely for the fact that two tracks–"Lovin', Livin' & Givin'" (a remake of her Thank God It's Friday contribution) and "What You Gave Me"–feature ersatz-Giorgio Moroder Eurodisco settings. Though the arrangements are passable, Ross' quivering vulnerability is undermined by icy production, and she's completely depersonalized. The rest of the album is made up of treacly songs and arrangements that exaggerate the singer's charm-school sweetness until it begins to sound meretricious.

Among today's pop divas, Diana Ross is probably the hardest to produce since her appeal is based on a sincerity and doelike innocence that, when sweetened beyond its natural state, soon becomes Mahogany camp.