Quote:
Originally Posted by The Batlord
I was listening to the debut at first. Their influences were more low key, whereas Fleetwood Mac wore theirs on their sleeves -- blues rock, folk, and country -- which made for a more overtly eclectic sound overall. They also beat the pants off of Toto as far as ballads go.
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If you knew the discography of Steely Dan you'd know that's where a huge amount of Toto's sound actually came from. Steely Dan were in my mind very low key, in that no one instrument or style of music overly dominated their sound, as they had real ability in merging everything together. Toto did something similar especially on their debut, as the debut features soft rock, hard rock, jazz, soul, R&B and prog but it's not always easy to detect these sounds on a first or second listen, unless of course you're really focused on it
As for ballads Toto had four vocalists to the three of Fleetwood Mac, whereas ballad duties were shared by the Fleetwood Mac vocalists, Toto only went really with one on their ballads, which means that if the listener doesn't dig Steve Lukather's vocals then he/she's probably not going to like the Toto ballads. The listener though has a choice of three with FM. Personally I'd put the ballads by both bands on an equal footing quality wise.
For example "99" and "I Won't Hold You Back" are pretty special ballads.