The title track and opener from Toto’s 1979 album Hydra was a progressive-rock juggernaut. Their album-closing “A Secret Love,” by contrast, is a tender and evocative love song.
Part of the ballad’s musical heft may have resulted from the contributions of co-writer Steve Porcaro, who has so often provided tender yet harmonically complex ballads during his tenure with Toto. “A Secret Love” starts with a similarly complex synthesizer intro, which leads to David Paich’s classically based piano flourish.
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Bobby Kimball again employs the top of his register but, unlike in the prior “White Sister,” goes more for sensitivity than power. Kimball’s approach works well, building on the layered synthesizer string backing and a harpsichord-sounding keyboard part.
Is “A Secret Love” intended to return to Toto’s beginning themes of mysticism and dragons? Does the song refer back to the “White Sister”? The listener is left with more questions than answers.
Indeed, Toto’s “A Secret Love” seems to only include the composers – David Paich, Bobby Kimball and Steve Porcaro – with the rest of the band sitting this one out. That makes for a weird, but fitting, end to a mixed bag of songs on Toto’s sophomore release.
Their next project, 1981’s Turn Back, would leave no doubt just what Toto was shooting for.
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