''Mathematics'' (styled ''Ma+hematics'') is the twelfth studio album by singer-songwriter Melissa Manchester, issued in April 1985.

Details

The album was Manchester's first studio album since leaving

Arista Records Arista Records () is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. The label was previously handled by BMG Entertainmen ...

, her label for ten years, after her 1983 album ''Emergency''. Signed to MCA Records, the album was a progression of that last album, in that it relied more on a

synth-pop Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s ...

/ new wave sound rather than on her earlier singer-songwriter-styled records. Roughly half the songs on the record were produced by

George Duke George M. Duke (January 12, 1946 – August 5, 2013) was an American keyboardist, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer. He worked with numerous artists as arranger, music director, writer and co-writer, record producer and as a pr ...

, with the rest produced by Brock Walsh and a then-unknown

Robbie Nevil Robert S. Nevil (born October 2, 1958) is an American pop singer, songwriter, producer, and guitarist who had five ''Billboard'' top 40 hits including his songs "C'est la Vie" (#2, 1986), "Dominoes" (#14, 1987), and " Wot's It to Ya" (#10, 1987 ...

. Robbie Buchanan produced the song "Thunder in the Night" (a song co-written by Martin Page and

Diane Warren Diane Eve Warren (born September 7, 1956) is an American songwriter. She has received several awards including a Grammy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, three ''Billboard'' Music Awards and an Honorary Academy Award. Wa ...

), and

Trevor Veitch Trevor Veitch (born May 19, 1946 in Vancouver, British Columbia) is a Canadian musician/record producer who has worked behind the scenes on many pop trends from the 1960s to the present. He is mostly known for his involvement in the popular 1960s ...

produced the song "

Energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat a ...

". Veitch also produced the song "So Full of Yourself", which was only released as the b-side to all three singles off the album. Quincy Jones served as executive producer on four songs on the LP. The song "Just One Lifetime" was sung by

Barbra Streisand Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand (; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success in multiple fields of entertainment, and is among the few performers List ...

James Brolin James Brolin (, born Craig Kenneth Bruderlin; July 18, 1940) is an American actor. Brolin has won two Golden Globes and an Emmy. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on August 27, 1998. He is the father of actor Josh Brolin. He is ...

during their wedding in 1998, and she recorded it for her 1999 album ''

A Love Like Ours ''A Love Like Ours'' is the twenty-eighth studio album by American singer Barbra Streisand. It was released in North America on September 21, 1999, and Europe on September 20, 1999. It is her 23rd Top 10 album in the US. This was Streisand's fi ...

''. Streisand liked the chorus of the song but not the verses, so it was asked that original songwriters

Tom Snow Thomas Righter Snow (born 1947 in Princeton, New Jersey) is an American songwriter. Biography Snow has written songs for Gayle McCormick "( Even a Fool Would Let Go" with Kerry Chater – a song covered by a number of artists including Kenny ...

and Manchester herself wrote new lyrics for the verses before recording it, which they duly did. The album spawned three singles: the uptempo title track "Mathematics" was the first single and peaked at #74 in the

Billboard Hot 100 The ''Billboard'' Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales (physical and digital), radio play, and online streaming ...

, becoming Manchester's last entry to date on that chart. The next two singles, the Hi-NRG track "

" (the only one to have a music video) and the ballad "Just One Lifetime", failed to chart. The album itself had limited success and continued Manchester's chart decline, peaking at a low No. 144 in the USA. To date, it is her last album to chart in that country. On June 17, 2014 Geffen Records released a digital version of the album through

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...

. The album was released on compact disc on November 2, 2018 by Real Gone Music, as a 2-CD set, with the second Disc containing extended mixes of singles, unreleased songs and other material from her MCA years, such as "The Music of Goodbye", a duet with Al Jarreau. This would be Manchester's only album with

MCA Records MCA Records was an American record label owned by MCA Inc., which later became part of Universal Music Group. Pre-history MCA Inc., a powerful talent agency and a television production company, entered the recorded music business in 1962 wit ...

. Her only other release with the label was in early 1986, when Manchester recorded the song "The Music of Goodbye", a duet with

Al Jarreau Alwin Lopez Jarreau (March 12, 1940 – February 12, 2017) was an American singer and musician. His 1981 album '' Breakin' Away'' spent two years on the ''Billboard'' 200 and is considered one of the finest examples of the Los Angeles pop and R ...

, for the soundtrack of the film '' Out of Africa'', which was also released as a single. She left the label not long after.

Track listing

Personnel

* Melissa Manchester – lead vocals *

–

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(1, 10),

Prophet 5 The Prophet-5 is an analog synthesizer manufactured by the American company Sequential. It was designed by Dave Smith and John Bowen in 1977, who used microprocessors, then a new technology, to create the first polyphonic synthesizer with full ...

(1, 6, 10), Memorymoog (1, 6, 9), rhythm arrangements (1), Synclavier 2 (6, 9, 10), Yamaha PF15 (6), arrangements (6, 9, 10), backing vocals (9), acoustic piano (10) * Tommy Faragher – synthesizers (2, 5, 7) * Brock Walsh – synthesizers (2, 4, 7), drums (2, 4, 5, 7), backing vocals (2, 4, 5) *

Larry Williams Larry Williams (born Lawrence Eugene Williams, a.k.a. Lawrence Edward Williams; May 10, 1935 – January 7, 1980) was an American rhythm and blues and rock and roll singer, songwriter, producer, and pianist from New Orleans, Louisiana. Williams ...

– synthesizers (2), saxophone (2, 5) * Richard Gibbs – keyboards (3), synthesizers (3) * Greg Mathieson – keyboards (3), synthesizers (3), arrangements (3) *

John Van Tongeren John Warrington Van Tongeren is an American keyboardist and composer for films and television. Biography Van Tongeren's career in the entertainment business began as a keyboardist, with one of his earliest projects being the band Q, featuring ...

– synthesizer and string arrangements (7) * Robbie Buchanan – keyboards (8), drum programming (8) *

Paul Jackson Jr. Paul Milton Jackson Jr. (born December 30, 1959) is an American fusion/urban jazz composer, arranger, producer and guitarist. He was born and raised in Los Angeles. Jackson knew by the age of fifteen that he wanted to become a professional musi ...

– guitar (1, 6, 9) *

– guitar programming (2, 4, 5, 7), drum programming (2, 4, 5, 7), backing vocals (2, 4, 5, 7), arrangements (2, 4, 5, 7) *

Michael Landau Michael Christopher Landau (born June 1, 1958) is an American musician, audio engineer, and record producer. He is a session musician and guitarist who has played on many albums since the early 1980s with Boz Scaggs, Minoru Niihara, Joni Mitch ...

– guitar (3) *

Lee Ritenour Lee Mack Ritenour ( ; born January 11, 1952) is an American jazz guitarist who has been active since the late 1960s. Biography Ritenour was born on January 11, 1952, in Los Angeles, California, United States. At the age of eight he started play ...

– guitar (3) *

Steve Lukather Steven Lee Lukather (born October 21, 1957) is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, arranger and record producer, best known as the sole continuous founding member of the rock band Toto. His reputation as a skilled guitarist led to a stea ...

– guitar solo (6) * Dann Huff – guitar (8) * Michael Sembello – guitar solo (10) * Abraham Laboriel – bass guitar (3) * Freddie Washington – bass guitar (10) * Carlos Vega – drums (3) *

John Robinson John Robinson may refer to: Academics *John Thomas Romney Robinson (1792–1882), Irish astronomer and physicist * John J. Robinson (1918–1996), historian and author of ''Born in Blood'' *John Talbot Robinson (1923–2001), paleontologist *John ...

– drums (6, 9) * Martin Page – drum programming (8) * Paulinho da Costa – percussion (1, 9) * Danny Pelfrey – saxophone solo (2) * Bill Reichenbach Jr. – trombone (2, 5) * Gary Grant – trumpet (2, 5), flugelhorn (2), piccolo flute (2) * Jerry Hey – trumpet (2, 5), horn arrangements (5) * Julia Waters – backing vocals (2, 5) * Maxine Waters – backing vocals (2, 5) * Steve George – backing vocals (3) *

Richard Page Richard Lewis Page (born 22 February 1941) is a former Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) in the United Kingdom from 1976 to 1979 and from December 1979 to 2005. Early life Born the son of Victor Charles Page, he went to the independent Hu ...

– backing vocals (3) *

Andraé Crouch Andraé Edward Crouch (July 1, 1942 – January 8, 2015) was an American gospel singer, songwriter, arranger, record producer and pastor. Referred to as "the father of modern gospel music" by contemporary Christian and gospel music profess ...

– backing vocals (7), BGV arrangements (7) * Maxi Anderson – backing vocals (7) * Rose Banks – backing vocals (7) * Jean Johnson – backing vocals (7) * Tata Vega – backing vocals (7) * Tommy Funderburk – backing vocals (8) * Tom Kelly – backing vocals (8) * Carl Carwell – backing vocals (9) * Lynn Davis – backing vocals (9) *

Marcy Levy Marcella Levy (born June 21, 1952), known professionally as Marcy Levy and (later in her career) Marcella Detroit, is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. She co-wrote the 1977 Eric Clapton hit "Lay Down Sally" and released her debut al ...

– backing vocals (9) * Petsye Powell – backing vocals (9) ;Strings on "Just One Lifetime" * George Del Barrio – string arrangements * Ronald Cooper, Douglas Davis, Ray Kelly and Earl Madison – cello * Dorothy Remsen – harp * Rollice Dale, Roland Kato, Janet Lakatos and Virginia Majewski – viola * Brenton Banks, Arnold Belnick, Stuart Canin, Bonnie Douglas, Assa Drori, David Frisnia, Ed Green, Reg Hill, Alexander Horvath, Karen Jones, Irma Neumann and Paul Shure – violin

Charts

References

{{Authority control 1985 albums Melissa Manchester albums albums produced by George Duke MCA Records albums