In the late 80s, I experienced a brief resurgence in my singing career. Within a span of three years, I scored four top-three US Adult Contemporary hits. “Can’t We Try?” was #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and went on to be Billboard’s Adult Contemporary Song of the Year for 1987. “Never Thought (That I Could Love)” hit #1 on Radio & Records Adult Contemporary chart in 1988, “Carmelia” peaked at #6. In 1989, “Unborn Heart” reached #2 on the AC charts. Also in 1989, a female singer named Celine Dion, then still largely unknown in English Canada, released her first successful radio single in Canada: “Can’t Live With You,” which I co-wrote. Celine and I also sang a duet, “Real Love,” on my ’89 album Wishful Thinking. 

Although I continued to bang out my own records in the 90s, many of which placed highly on the US Adult Contemporary charts (“I Fall All Over Again” peaked at #3 in 1992), I’d grown weary of all the blood, sweat, tears, and politics that go into being a pop performer. To my great fortune, Celine Dion recorded a song (“Seduces Me”) that I co-wrote with John Sheard on her Grammy Award–winning album Falling Into You. (I also served as co-producer on “Seduces Me,” along with John Jones and Rick Hahn.) Because I played a part—along with at least a dozen other producers—in putting together Celine Dion’s thirty million plus selling album, I was awarded a Grammy. I found this rather ironic, as I’m a far better singer and songwriter than producer. Not that I was complaining. (I’d earned an earlier Grammy nomination in 1979, for male vocal performance of the year for “Sometimes When We Touch,” but lost to Barry Manilow, who, you guessed it, went on to record “Sometimes When We Touch”, releasing it as a single in 1998.)