I've been listening to some 70s funk and soul recently - and besides their unforgettable "Car Wash", I'd never really listened to anything else by Rose Royce. Oddly, their first album was the soundtrack to the comedy film Car Wash. So I figured, I'd check out their first album proper In Full Bloom. It's a pretty damn good record - but I think their ballads are better than their exercises in funk. Case in point, the first track on the record, "Wishing on a Star" - which is unfortunately, the best song on the entire damn record.
The piano stabs, the deliberate percussion, the woozy strings, and most importantly, the crescendoes near the end and the absolutely beautiful vocals from Rose Norwalt (Gwen Dickey) - just wonderful. I love it. Again, it sucks that it's clearly the best song on the record. Peep it if you haven't heard it.
ALSO:
Hearing this track was a bit of a mindblower to me - as some of you know, I'm a big fan of house music. John Summit released a house track a couple years ago ("Forgotten One") that samples "Wishing on a Star". I should've done some more exploration at the time, because I've naively assumed that the vocals weren't a sample, but an original piece created specifically for that song. How wrong I was - but anyways, it was a great sample choice:
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