Teddy Pendergrass, Can’t We Try | Throwback Vibez 🕶️🎶

In the 78th edition of Throwback Vibez (2023), we recollect and reflect on “Can’t We Try” by soul great, Teddy Pendergrass.

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 78th edition of Throwback Vibez 🕶️🎶 (2023), we recollect and reflect on 🎵 “Can’t We Try”, performed by soul great, 🎙 Teddy Pendergrass. 

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Breaking up is hard to do. Truer words have never spoken. On the 1980 soul ballad, 🎵 “Can’t We Try”, 🎙 Teddy Pendergrass is struggling to end things with his significant other.  The breakup is inevitable, but he hates to see this result. “Come lay your head on my heart / Soon it’ll be apart, stay here to the touch of morning.” Regardless, the couple is ending things as friends, but still, it is S-A-D.  “In case I don’t see you again,” Pendergrass sings in the second verse, “Really wish you well, baby, this is hell.” Indeed, indeed. 

The crowning achievement of this gem from 💿 TP, lyrically, is the chorus.  Teddy Pendergrass is a master at balladry and “Can’t We Try” ranks among his best.  It is a shame it only managed to peak at no. 52 on the Billboard Hot 100! Anyways, he sings, lovingly:  

“Can’t we try 

Love was never born to say goodbye 

Just another helpless fool in love is what I am 

But I don’t give a damn 

Sorry, I forgot myself 

I guess that I’m just not myself.” 

Of course TP is not himself – he’s breaking up with his baby 😢! Even though it is a sad day for him, it is sweet music to our ears.  That music is amplified by lush production, courtesy of Teddy and  🎛 Jack Faith (who arranges).  Who penned this sheer excellence? Why, that would be 🎼 ✍ Ronald Miller and Ken Hirsch. Kudos fellows! Of course, the star of the show that is 🎵 “Can’t We Try” is the late, great, sexy baritone himself, Mr. Teddy Pendergrass.  

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🎙 Teddy Pendergrass • 💿 TP • 🏷 Sony Music Entertainment • 🗓 1980 

Teddy Pendergrass, “Can’t We Try”: Throwback Vibez 🕶️🎶 No. 78 (2023) [📷: Brent Faulkner / The Musical Hype; Sony Music Entertainment; John Alan Sperry, PIRO via  Pixabay]