One Night With A Stranger

Perhaps feeling the influence of the new wave, Martin Briley simplified the guitar lines and speeded up the tempos on his second album. He also simplified his lyrics, which may have helped him get his first and only Top 40 hit with the lead-off track, a characteristic put-down song called "The Salt In My Tears" (as in "you're not worth...") Still complaining about love gone wrong, Briley was more often casting his tales of romantic wrongdoing in the third person and increasing the humor content on songs like "She's So Flexible" and "Dumb Love," which recount unusual, if not unlikely encounters, as well as the story song "One Night With A Stranger," which revealed the dangers of one-night stands. Briley still wasn't creating a distinctive musical persona -- sometimes he sounded like Sting, sometimes like Phil Collins -- but his writing showed enough promise that you hoped he would yet do so. And the surprise hit seemed to give him the opportunity. ~ William Ruhlmann