A rare Robert Lamm-Peter Cetera collaboration, Chicago’s “Upon Arrival” recalls the days when people could mill around in North American airports virtually unchecked.
In the ’80s, there were no surly TSA employees, malfunctioning self check-in kiosks, shoes-off hands-up full-body X-ray screenings, or 3-1-1 liquid rules. Anyone could enter the airport, watch planes take off and land, and even meet their arriving family or friends right at the gate!
That’s the basis of “Upon Arrival” from 1980’s Chicago XIV. A “V.I.P” meets a chauffeur and shakes his hand; a family picks up their son and brother who has been away for some time; a young girl greets her boyfriend, and everyone heads off to baggage claim and hopes their luggage didn’t get routed to Timbuktu.
Except for one woman in dark glasses, whose “love is lost.” That unresolved chord at the end of the song hints at some sinister reason why he didn’t show up, and it’s not a happy ending for her.
(Had this song come out five years earlier, it might have been interpreted as a fall-of-Saigon narrative: Imagine the V.I.P. as a general, the girl’s boyfriend a West Point cadet, the son a freed P.O.W., and the woman at the end waiting for her husband’s casket to be unloaded.)
“Upon Arrival” is a pleasant, upbeat Chicago song with a nice tune and arrangement. It’s not something that sticks in the head, or something you’re likely to remember after the album is over, but the track doesn’t make for bad listening while it’s playing.
My guess is that Lamm wrote the lyrics and Cetera the melody, but that “wo wo wo” at the end of the verses is a Cetera trademark, so maybe it was a joint composition. Either way, it’s a shame these two didn’t work together more often.
