While Teena Marie’s fourth album in 1981’s It Must Be Magic was her most successful release commercially up to this point? It was also to be her last on Motown. Though they’d mentored her artistry? Their unwillingness to let Lady T out of her contract while withholding her new material led to the very pro artist law known as the Brockert Initiative. This made it illegal to do what Motown had done to her and,while not intentional was one of the many forward thinking marks she made on the music world during this time
While her huge hit single from the album “Square Biz” was a very innovative mixture of live band funk and rap that symbolically precipitated new jack swing by about half a decade? Another song on the album leaped out at me due to the then recent murder of John Lennon. As a baby boomer experiencing late childhood just in time for Beatlemania? Teena Marie would up having a great deal to say about the Fab Four’s enormous influence on the artistic and cultural ethic of popular musicians of their time. The result was called “Revolution”.
A slow ballad style gospel piano solo accompanied by a probing slide guitar introduces the song. A horn blast gets it all going into the basic grooves which finds the piano bouncing,the rhythm guitar jumping in high melody along with the horns and a jazzy funk shuffle. Lady T sings her own back round vocals almost as different aspects of her personality responding back to the others. On the refrains the song kicks into a big band era swing rhythm with a kicking drum roll. And the main chorus extends a verse before the song finally fades away.
Instrumentally speaking? This song is one of the finest examples of swinging jazziness and melodic funky soul that I ever heard coming from Teena Marie. Everything is crisp,bright and full of vitality all the way. She is having a conversation with her “bestest friend” named Mickey Boyce,who originally signed to Motown with her,about how the Beatles history and innovations to pop musicians had seemed blown away with the slaying of Lennon. Yet she begins with the lesson she gained from it all: that it’s time to put an end to war and start anew.
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