Andy 1976

After suffering diminishing sales in the early '70s, Andy Williams finally missed the U.S. charts entirely with his 1975 album The Other Side of Me. (The LP did chart for a week in the U.K.) Of course, most of his peers in the ranks of middle-aged, middle-of-the-road pop singers weren't even recording for major labels anymore by then, but Williams had been defying gravity for so long it had seemed he would go on doing so forever. By the mid-'70s, however, his touring activities and a new syndicated TV show were occupying more of his attention, and he had less time to focus on recording, just as Columbia Records was less interested in promoting him. On Andy, he came up with mostly new songs, though he covered the much-recorded standard "Since I Fell for You" and the Rascals' 1967 hit "Groovin'" in a Caribbean arrangement. The new songs came from Los Angeles pros like Craig Doerge, Judy Henske, Kim Carnes, and Bruce Johnston (some of whom, along with the cream of L.A. session musicians, performed on the LP), but there were no real winners among them, and Columbia didn't even bother to pull one for a single. (There was a certain irony in that since, recorded over a series of sessions, the tracks may have been intended originally to produce singles rather than constituting an album project.) Williams gave each tune a sensitive, soothing reading, but that wasn't enough to raise the material above mediocrity. As a result, Andy missed the charts, and although Williams remained on the Columbia roster for another four years, it was his last album of new material released by the label in the U.S. ~ William Ruhlmann