The Seventh One

Performer: Toto
Producer: George Massenburg; Bill Payne
Distributor: Sony Music Distribution (

Notes: Recorded at The Complex, The Manor and A&M Recording Studios, Los Angeles, California. Toto attempted to satisfy commercial considerations by loading up the first half of their seventh album with the kind of power ballads that had given the band recognition before, especially songs named after women whose names end in "A" like "Pamela" and "Anna." But these thinly veiled rewrites of "Rosanna" earned only modest radio play, and the rest of the album, which rocked harder as it went on, while it may have been truer to the band's musical aspirations, continued to sound too anonymous to earn any response beyond the band's fan base, especially its international one (which it seemed to be acknowledging by printing some of the sleeve notes in Japanese). ~ William Ruhlmann Toto attempted to satisfy commercial considerations by loading up the first half of their seventh album with the kind of power ballads that had given the band recognition before, especially songs named after women whose names end in "A" like "Pamela" and "Anna." -- but these thinly veiled rewrites of "Rosanna" earned only modest radio play. The rest of the album rocked harder as it went on, and may have been truer to the band's musical aspirations. ~ William Ruhlmann

The original members of Toto were L.A.-based session men who had played with everyone from George Benson to Boz Scaggs and wanted to create something they could call their own. They scored a hit straight out of the gate with the AOR smash "Hold the Line" from their 1978 debut. Their biggest success, however, would come in the early '80s with "Rosanna" and "Africa" from TOTO IV. The band endured some major personnel shake-ups over the years, and in 1992 founding drummer Jeff Porcaro died unexpectedly, but Toto continued working, even as the individual members kept their lucrative session careers going.

Click Here for Shipping Options and Policies

Shipping or Dimension weight in pounds: 0.5