“Can I Touch You…There?” by Michael Bolton

Despite what his detractors say, Michael Bolton’s voice is actually pretty great under the right circumstances, and as I’ve stated before, he did record a few decent songs even in his Soft Rock period, but most of his material is ruined by his tendency to perform every song as though he was in the throes of some kind of hysterical fit. If you study his background, the problem becomes obvious…he got his start fronting a Hair Metal band, and since that’s where he picked up his vocal technique, he still performs every song in a Metal Scream, whether it’s a syrupy Easy Listening ballad or a Classic Soul cover, no matter how inappropriate that is for the material at hand. It also doesn’t help that his Soft Rock material tended, with a few exceptions, to be outstandingly poor; most of his originals came from assembly-line Easy Listening hack Diane Warren, but Bolton apparently wrote this one more or less on his own, which may be the problem. Apart from the music itself, which quite literally sounds like a porn soundtrack, there’s the disgusting title and moronic, sleazy lyrics that aren’t even competent enough to create actual double-entendres. This is pretty much the worst song Bolton ever recorded, and it does a lot to explain how he wound up with his current reputation as a world-class laughingstock.

Verdict: Ewwww.

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