Nominally,
the Temptations
'
For Lovers Only
is an album of
pop
standards. But producer
Richard Perry
and primary arranger
Isias Gamboa
have taken such a radical approach to presenting the familiar songs that listeners accustomed to versions of
Rodgers & Hammerstein
's
"Some Enchanted Evening"
and
Lerner & Loewe
"I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face"
that derive from the Broadway musicals in which these songs originated may not recognize them as the same compositions, even after more than one listen. These tracks retain the basic lyrics and some melodic elements, but they go far beyond the usual matters of tempo and instrumental coloring that characterize what is called an arrangement;
Gamboa
has used the original songs as the merest basis for writing his own songs. And
pitch in enthusiastically in the transformations.
Theo Peoples
, singing lead vocals on
"I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face,"
launches into an extended vocal improvisation at the end of the song that doesn't contain any of the words
Alan Jay Lerner
wrote. Similarly,
Sammy Cahn
might be surprised, if he had lived long enough, to discover that the opening line of his song
"Time After Time"
is now "Drop the groove." But if
is not traditional by any means, it does make
sound contemporary, and it became the group's only album released between 1991 and 1998 to reach the charts, spending six months on the
R&B
lists. In 2000,
"Night and Day,"
an unusually faithful rendition of the
Cole Porter
song, was used in the film
What Women Want
in a "remixed" version from the one on the album (which is to say quite different, including a saxophone solo not present on the original).
Motown
added this recording as a bonus track for a 2002 reissue of the album. ~ William Ruhlmann