Kristy & Jimmy McNichol, Self-titled
The 1978 debut (and only) album by the teen siblings isn't bad! There are three remakes of old pop classics that are pretty good. "He's So Fine" features The Chiffons on background vocals, with Kristy trying her best to sound like a pop singer. There's a nice acoustic guitar strumming through the whole endeavor, and an overall sound that makes you nostalgic for the year 1978 when Kristy was still starring in the TV show Family and was beginning to make movies (e.g., The End as Burt Reynolds' daughter). "My Boyfriend's Back" is a little better reading by Kristy, with effective percussion and a slightly wobbly, new wave guitar sound hidden behind the standard instrumentation that sounds like what you'd hear on any celebrity's TV special of the times (i.e., a facsimile of rock music). "Rock & Roll Is Here to Stay" is the best remake of the three. Jimmy takes the lead here and holds his own among other boy teen idols of the time, and Kristy infuses the song with playful charm by cooing her background vocals "Rock and roll will always be / It'll go down in history." The song really chugs along and the session musicians are having fun with the keyboards, chunky bass, and plucky guitars. I defy anyone to not tap their toes while listening to this one. (Besides, Kristy and Jimmy are so-o-o cute to look at on the album cover and poster inserts!)
Jimmy (Kristy's brother who also vied for teen stardom at the time) infuses his numbers with a gritty vocal delivery that surpasses most of the radio hits of Shaun Cassidy or Leif Garrett. "Box on Wheels" is a Beach Boys-flavored ode to his car, with its tape deck "pumping up some rock & roll," and the girl in the passenger seat beside him who rides with him, "Easy / rollin' along." She is his "favorite view" even as they pass by the coast, the desert, the beach, the "whole wide world / here within our reach;" the song exudes a playful sexual tension, particularly in the refrain "Love how it feels / In a box on wheels." ("Come ride with me / love the way it feels"). Jimmy's real crowd-pleaser, though, is on Side 1, "Girl You Really Got Me Going." Here, we've got a slight new wave sound, with power pop percussion, on a song that could have been done by The Rubinoos, it's that sincere. Interesting that Kristy's vocals are nowhere to be found on these two songs, and they are better because of it. As "come-on" songs, it would have been weird for his sister to appear in the vocals. It's also interesting that Kristy's primary lead vocals occur on "innocent" throwback songs that put her in the passive role ("My Boyfriend's Back" and "He's So Fine"), whereas Jimmy takes the lead on two songs that portray him as a sexual aggressor.
Kristy's ballad "Slow Dance" has a melancholy, Carpenters feel but of course her vocals are not in the same league as Karen's. I believe this may be a song that Cheryl Ladd later recorded but I'm not sure. (And I am not a fan of the saxophone on this whole album.) All in all, it's a song that gets better if you consider it is like much of the "easy listening" fare that was popular in 1978-79. And, at many points in my life, I would have given anything to have a slow dance with Kristy McNichol...
"Page by Page," the second single released from the album after "He's So Fine" was a minor hit, is arguably the best song on the album. It would have passed for country music at the time, and features a nice harmony from the siblings, a tenderness evocative of the singers' real feelings. (I'm still chasing down the promo 45 of the song, and its picture sleeve.)
Unfortunately, the two "funky" songs on Side 2, "Go For It" and "Hot Tunes," are listenable, but the inclusion of a fold-out poster of Kristy and Jimmy in silk athletic gear, plus a rare insert advertising several posters that the teenage consumer could purchase and hang on their walls and dream of kissing Kristy (and/or Jimmy) in their own bedrooms, makes up for these two songs' inclusion.
Over the years, I've been working on essays that examine how Kristy often seemed trapped in the TV and movie roles she played, always ready to pour out a shower of genuine tears that come from a pain that couldn't quite be healed. Kristy may have been "cute" to everyone at the time, with her face and fabricated stories plastered on the covers of many teen magazines, but her hidden pain only reinforces how real people and their feelings get consumed by the desires of those of us who gaze so rapturously and longingly at them.
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