Sunday, November 19, 2017

An overlooked cover tune XLI

Another standout Johnny Mathis recorded for his "I'm Coming Home" album: "Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)," which was an inexplicably minor hit for The Stylistics in 1971.  Wisely, Mathis stuck to the original ballad's arrangement, showing that the Thom Bell-Linda Creed tune needed no further embellishments.  Considering the song's lyrical universality and depths-of-the-heart emoting that The Stylistics and Mathis pull off, both versions should be better known.