“Victorious” is perhaps one of the most frustrating tracks on 1988’s Chicago 19. Sadly, Marc Jordan’s demo of this song had so much more potential than what Chicago did with it.
It wasn’t always like this. Former producer David Foster was able to take a rather bland demo of “Hard Habit to Break” and rearrange it into a smash hit. But there was a serious lack of imagination in Chicago’s attempt without him on “Victorious.”
The lack of imagination is most evident in Robert Lamm’s vocal delivery: It’s almost note for note identical to Marc Jordan’s vocals on the demo. After I heard Marc Jordan’s 1999 jazz album This Is How Men Cry, I got a sense of what could have been with Chicago.
They could have done a jazz arrangement of “Victorious,” even though it would have sounded horribly out of place on Chicago 19. Why not toss in a muted trumpet solo from Lee Loughnane, arguably the best soloist of Chicago’s horn section? Instead, Chicago’s take was strictly a paint-by-numbers polishing of Marc Jordan’s demo. Nothing more.
As the last track on Chicago’s final album of the 1980s, “Victorious” marked a sad ending to a decade that had shown so much promise with the release of 1982’s Chicago 16. They’d seemingly forgotten who they were — or rather than tell their own story, Chicago had let their record label and producers control the narrative.
In the end, a promising demo for “Victorious” ended up being anything but.
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