“Love is a Wonderful Thing” by Michael Bolton

Michael Bolton has a reputation as one of the worst Soft Rock acts out there, but his first few albums in that vein did at least produce a few decent singles. Since Bolton had started out as a fairly legit Hard Rock singer, most of his better songs (like “How Can We Be Lovers” and “Time, Love and Tenderness”) tended to have traces of this sound, while his worst songs tended to be his ill-advised ventures into the world of Soul and R&B, which makes this song something of an anomaly. The big scandal regarding this song is that it might or might not have been plagiarized from an obscure Isley Brothers single, and like anything that could even be mistaken for the Isley Brothers, it’s not really all that bad. The smooth, infectious Soul-influenced music is a far more convincing attempt at the genre that most of what Bolton was releasing at the time, and Bolton keeps his notorious vocal histrionics relatively under control here, resulting in one of the most enjoyable tracks he ever recorded after he switched from Hard Rock to Soft Rock.

Verdict: Good

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *