Player, Baby Come Back | Throwback Vibez 🕶️🎶

In the 61^st edition of Throwback Vibez (2024), we recollect and reflect on “Baby Come Back” by the soft rock band, Player. 

The vibes, the vibes, those Throwback Vibez 🕶️🎶! Throwback Vibez 🕶️🎶 is a column that celebrates awesome songs from the past.  The records that grace this column are older, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re ancient – no fossils 🦴! All genres of music are welcome. In the 61^st edition of Throwback Vibez 🕶️🎶 (2024), we recollect and reflect on “Baby Come Back” performed by Player.

“Baby come back, any kind of fool could see / There was something in everything about you.” Soft rock band Player is best known for one song: “Baby Come Back”. “Baby Come Back” appears as the second track on the band’s 1977, self-titled album. The chorus, which is EVERYTHING, continues, “Baby come back, you can blame it all on me / I was wrong, and I just can’t live without you.” Word. “Baby” reached no. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, one of two top-10 hits by the band. The song was penned by J.C. Crowley (keys, backing vocals) and Peter Beckett (lead vocals, electric guitar).  Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter produced the beloved 70s gem.

The instrumental is one of many selling points regarding “Baby Come Back.” The record features an electrifying drum groove (John Friesen), robust bass line (Ronn Moss), and smooth keys (Crowley).  The guitar sounds marvelous as well, with the best moments occurring during the chorus where the volume is turned up, as well as a lit solo that concludes the song. Over the silky smooth, lush instrumental, Becket delivers compelling, nuanced lead vocals. Throughout the verses, he maintains his composure, never over-singing. Matters of the heart dominate, as evidenced by the title. “But when the morning comes, I’m right back where I started again / And tryin’ to forget you is just a waste of time,” he sings in the first, echoing the sentiment in the second, “But as the sun goes down, I get that empty feeling again / How I wish to God that you were here.” In the chorus, which is tuneful to the nth degree, he’s assisted by epic, harmonized backing vocals (Crowley and Moss). With such elite verses and a chorus for all ages, fittingly, there’s a change of pace during the bridge section (“Have you used up all the love in your heart? / Nothing left for me? Ain’t there nothing left for me?”). With a diverse harmonic progression and separating itself from everything that precedes it, the bridge makes the song even better. “Baby Come Back” is one of those timeless rock classics where the music speaks for itself.

Player // Player // Universal Music Operations Limited // 1977

Player, Baby Come Back: Throwback Vibez 🕶️🎶 No. 61 (2024) [📷: Brent Faulkner / The Musical Hype; Universal Music Operations Limited; OpenClipart-Vectors, Speedy McVroom via  Pixabay]