Greatest Hits: The RCA Years

Producers include: Barry Gibb, Karl Richardson, Albhy Galuten, Tom Dowd, Michael Jackson.
Compilation producers: Paul Williams.
Engineers include: Larry Alexander, Paul Brown, Bruce Wildstein,
Includes liner notes by Joseph F. Laredo.
For Ms. Ross, they may have been "The RCA Years," but for the rest of us, they were simply the '80s. In any case, this is a craftily chosen distillation of Ross's post-Motown work during that fondly remembered decade, and as such it's easily as important an artifact of its time as, say, John Hughes movies or Tears For Fears.
Some of the songs were produced by the diva herself ("In Your Arms"), but most were done in collaboration with some of the biggest names of the period, including Michael Jackson, Lionel Ritchie, Dan Hartman, and Barry Gibb. We note with some small satisfaction that the writing credit on Ross's hit re-make of Frankie Lymon's '50s classic "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" once again includes Lymon's name as co-author (on the 1981 single, it had mysteriously vanished).