One reality I’m coming to terms with as I dig down deeper into reviewing the wealth of super deluxe, audiophile-grade restorations of mainstream pop records — especially those from the 1980s and beyond — is that the improvements we hear are often going to be subtle and rather nuanced. If you are a deep fan of a particular artist, you’ll notice the differences immediately.
However, for the casual listening audiophile who is simply looking for the best possible version of a favorite recording, some educated ears (if you will) may be useful. Hopefully my reviews here at eCoustics will be of help, especially for an album like Lionel Richie’s 1983 mega hit Can’t Slow Down which is one of the latest in Universal / Capitol-Interscope’s excellent Definitive Sound Series (DSS) reissues.
Official materials for this new edition underscore just how huge the album was back in the day: “‘Can’t Slow Down’ has sold over 20 million copies, had 5 singles hit the Top 10 with “All Night Long (All Night) and “Hello” hitting number 1. The album also won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1985.”
Accordingly, Lionel Richie’s second solo LP very much embodies the sound of popular music, and particularly commercial radio at that time. Percolating with synthesizers and early drum machine production aesthetics, that very compressed radio-ready “’80s” sound was carefully crafted to ensure hits on every possible platform. In those pre-streaming times, radio was still the number one way to learn about new music, both on the AM and FM bandwidths. MTV was still growing in importance and Lionel Richie was certainly among the first to ride that video train to superstardom.
That crisp punchy sound was also idealized for portable cassette players, boomboxes, car stereos, transistor radios and TV speakers as well as home audio systems. The soundstage was relatively narrow, probably a necessity to accommodate all the playback outlets.
And therein lies the appeal of the new DSS reissue of Can’t Slow Down: it stays true to the album’s original sound while sounding less compressed.
DSS albums are made using the acclaimed “One Step” process which reduces the number of stages typically employed in making vinyl records, resulting in a listening experience closer to the original master source. It delivers more of the music which was previously more constrained.
In preparing for this review, I felt it was very important for me to find a stock vinyl pressing of Can’t Slow Down to hear for the first time before playing the DSS edition. Full disclosure: while I can’t pretend to be the aforementioned “deep fan” of Mr. Richie’s music, I was pleasantly surprised how much of this album I was familiar with, simply from hearing it everywhere you went back in the day.
Now, on the DSS One Step pressing of Can’t Slow Down, those percolating early computerized rhythms and lush synthesizer swells appear more wide screen in your speakers. Lionel Richie’s distinctive voice pops out at the listener more directly and, overall, the instrumentation appears more defined, resonant and clear. The 180-gram vinyl, pressed at RTI, is dead quiet and perfectly centered.
The packaging on this DSS edition of Can’t Slow Down is also exemplary. The album cover production looks wonderful, appearing significantly better than the stock copy I have. It looks quite elegant, actually. Each disc also comes housed in its own deluxe plastic lined audiophile grade inner sleeve.
If you are a serious fan of Lionel Richie’s music and 1980s pop in general, you’ll probably want to grab a copy of Can’t Slow Down before it sells out. A limited run of 3,000 copies, it is available for $100 exclusively at Capitol Records’ website (click here).
Mark Smotroff is a deep music enthusiast / collector who has also worked in entertainment oriented marketing communications for decades supporting the likes of DTS, Sega and many others. He reviews vinyl for Analog Planet and has written for Audiophile Review, Sound+Vision, Mix, EQ, etc. You can learn more about him at LinkedIn.
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