HOLD ON TO LOVE

A nice, catchy, jazzy single from In the City of Angels, "Hold on to Love" was written by Anderson and Lamont Dozier, one of the greatest pop and R&B songwriters of all time. Dozier, who was part of the Holland?Dozier?Holland team, co-wrote sixteen US #1 songs.

"Hold on to Love" isn't exactly US #1 material, but it's much more chart-friendly than most anything Anderson recorded before or after. Oddly, Anderson supposedly quit Yes earlier the same year because the band had gone commercial ("be gone, you ever-piercing power play machine / cutting our musical solidarity ... for too long I have danced to your destiny..."), and yet In the City of Angels, and "Hold on to Love" in particular, represented Anderson's most mainstream music since he recorded as Hans Christian in the late 1960s.

But I digress. Epic 651514 2, the release specified here on Prog Archives, was a three-track CD single released in Europe, although apparently it was not a promo. It contained the album versions of "Hold on to Love," "In a Lifetime," and "Sundancing (For the Hopi/Navajo Energy)." A standard commercial single was released in throughout Europe and North America, as well as in Japan and Australia, with "Hold on to Love (edit)" b/w "Sundancing." The edited version of "Hold on to Love" fades out about 50 seconds early; otherwise it sounds like the same mix.

"Hold on to Love" has an interesting structure. Following the first verse is technically the pre-chorus, but inasmuch it begins with a repetition of "hold on to love," it appears to be the chorus. The next distinct section seems to be the bridge, but repeated listenings reveal that it's actually the chorus proper. The real bridge comes later. It's hard to tell exactly what Anderson and Dozier each brought to the song. Dozier is thought of as a lyricist, but the lyrics are more Andersonian than the music.

"Sundancing (For the Hopi/Navajo Energy)" is a vaguely "world music" song akin to "Teakbios" from Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, which is not a good thing in my opinion. Lyrically it echoes "In the Big Dream" and "Fist of Fire" from that same album (e.g., "come alive the singers out of the sun / come alive the dancers out of the moon / come alive the passion...").

"In a Lifetime," the other Anderson-Dozier composition, is a saccharine adult-contemporary song that, I think it's entirely fair to say, is about as un-progressive as a song can be. Plus it's a cloying panderfest. However, when assigning a star rating to a single, I'll increase the rating if the b-side is good, but I usually won't penalize the single if the b-side is poor (which is certainly the case here).

Bottom line: "Hold on to Love" is good, but certainly not great. It's one of Anderson's stronger solo songs. Yes and Jon Anderson completionists may want the single edit; it has been released on a few compilations, but as far as I know it's not widely available. For everyone else, the version on In the City of Angels should suffice.