Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson weren’t so much musicians as aural painters working on the canvases of their listener’s eardrums. As producers and studio wizards, they had a knack for choosing just the right paint to use on Alan Parsons Project albums.
A case in point is “If I Could Change Your Mind” from Eve, the gold-selling Top 15 Billboard hit album released on Aug. 27, 1979. Rather than using their usual go-to male singers like Lenny Zakatek or Colin Blunstone, Parsons and Woolfson tapped Lesley Duncan.
As a singer-songwriter, Duncan was best known for composing “Love Song.” She sang it in a duet with Elton John on 1970’s rootsy Tumbleweed Connection. “Love Song” was also covered by David Bowie, Olivia Newton-John and Barry White, among many others.
With the Alan Parsons Project’s “If I Could Change Your Mind,” Duncan delivered a wrenching vocal over a haunted background of woodwinds and strings, taking on the role of a woman reaching out to a lover who has moved on. She helped the band grab the listener by the lapels, forcing us not to merely hear but feel her deeply felt pleas to reconsider.
What makes Duncan’s delivery so powerful, so heartbreaking, is the realization that she knows her pleas are in vain. No matter how much she wants him to change his mind, it’s all for naught. That’s why “If I Could Change Your Mind” hits like an emotional sledgehammer.
Much of the credit goes to a gutsy choice. This was a vocal performance with equal parts yearning and utter futility from Lesley Duncan, who died in 2010 after a battle with cerebro-vascular disease.
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