Love Songs

Though widely acknowledged as a hard-driving rock band, Toto's greatest feats were their sensitive, yet equally as potent rock ballads and love songs. All of the singalongs and even the mumble-a-longs familiar to the die-hard fan and casual listener are included on here, many of them staples of soft rock radio. While Love Songs has moments of drifting and losing focus, the sequencing is planned brilliantly, interspersing major hits with album material like a proper arena rock concert -- almost as if the band is giving you time to recover from singing "Africa" and "I Won't Hold You Back" at full volume before throwing the barnburner "Pamela" in your face. If "Hold the Line" would have been included, Love Songs could quite possibly have been the essential collection that this band so earnestly deserves and fans need.