Get the latest gossip
Forever No. 1: David Soul’s ‘Don’t Give Up on Us’
The soft-rock ballad helped cement Soul’s mid-’70s cross-platform stardom, but didn’t necessarily fit in with his loftier musical inspirations.
Once he revealed himself to be a handsome, blond young man, the novelty of his anonymous routine wore off — but he started attracting the attention of producers in film and TV, who cast him in small guest roles on Flipper, Star Trek, The Streets of San Francisco and more big shows of the late ’60s and ’70s. The lyrics are mostly sappy and a little silly throughout (“Can’t we stay the way we are?/ The angel and the dreamer/ Who sometimes plays a fool”), but a mysterious bridge where Soul admits, “I really lost my head last night/ You’ve got a right to stop believing,” does introduce a little drama and complexity to the narrative. It’s never less than a professional pop production, and one that Soul himself is more than capable of selling with his lilting baritone — particularly when his voice gets double-tracked for some gorgeous self-harmonies on subsequent choruses — which grows just mighty enough to handle the money note on his climactic “ We can still come through ” insistence.
Or read this on Billboard
