The Ambrosia album with the two biggest hits on it, made by the six-piece line-up: two keyboard players, a dedicated extra singer, and a producer credit shared with the band itself for the first time.

The short version

One Eighty was released by Warner Bros. in April 1980 and reached number 25 on the Billboard 200, just below the number 19 of the album before it. It produced two hits — ‘Biggest Part Of Me’ at number 3 and ‘You’re The Only Woman’ at number 13 — and brought the band three Grammy nominations, including Best Pop Vocal Group. Nine tracks, all sung, all in English. It was recorded across five studios in the Los Angeles area and mastered by Doug Sax.

Six members, three Grammy nominations, two hits

The six-piece assembled at the end of 1978 is the one heard here: David Pack and Joe Puerta on guitar, bass and lead vocals, Burleigh Drummond on drums, Christopher North back on organ, Chamberlin, clavinet and Minimoog, David Cutler Lewis on electric piano and synthesizer, and Royce Jones on vocals and percussion. Two guests appear: Ernie Watts plays the saxophone on the album’s biggest song, credited there on the sleeve and on a second track in one reference, and Daniel Kobialka returns for a violin part. It is also the first Ambrosia record on which the band share the production credit.

The sound

Smooth, harmony-first soft rock, and the most polished record in the catalogue. With two keyboard players and a third singer, the arrangements have depth without the density of the early albums, and the running order is built around songs rather than around structures. Pack takes four leads, Puerta two, Drummond one and Royce Jones one; the ninth track carries no lead-vocal credit at all. The playing is precise, the mix is wide and warm, and nothing here was built to puzzle a radio programmer, which is why progressive listeners tend to reach for the first two albums instead.

Reading up on prog? The books go deeper →

The songs

‘Biggest Part Of Me’, written and sung by David Pack with Ernie Watts on saxophone, was released on 18 March 1980 and reached number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, number 3 on adult contemporary and number 1 on Radio and Records. ‘You’re The Only Woman’, also written by Pack, followed on 1 July and reached number 13, their fifth and final American top forty hit. ‘Shape I’m In’, written by Joe Puerta, is the one track sung by Royce Jones — his only documented lead vocal on any Ambrosia album.

Reception and legacy

Number 25 on the Billboard 200 sat just under the previous album’s 19, but the two singles took them further onto American radio than anything before. The three Grammy nominations that followed are the only ones in the catalogue documented as artist categories; the 1975 nomination is documented as an engineering one and the 1976 category is not recorded anywhere consulted. A world headlining tour followed, with Cliff Woolley added for the Japanese dates, and a run of soundtrack work through 1980 and 1981 included a Burt Bacharach song they recorded for the film Arthur. No named critical judgement on the album survives in the standard references.

The verdict

If you know one Ambrosia record without knowing you know it, this is probably the one. ‘Biggest Part Of Me’ is a beautifully built pop song and the album around it is consistent in a way the earlier records deliberately were not. It is not where the progressive interest lies. Take it for what it is: the peak of a second career that had almost nothing to do with the first.

Browse the bookshelf in the footer →