The record in context

Just Another Way to Say I Love You was released in 1975. AllMusic’s catalogue places it immediately before the 1976 album Let the Music Play.

Listen closely

A signature sound can make a record feel familiar before you have listened closely. The useful challenge is to hear the differences inside that familiarity. A phrase may be more emphatic, a rhythm more relaxed or an instrumental line more prominent than the broad memory of the artist’s style suggests.

White’s music is particularly rewarding when you attend to those proportions. A low vocal does not produce the same emotional effect in every setting. The surrounding pace and texture can make it feel reassuring, insistent or reflective. The arrangement supplies the context in which the voice acquires its meaning.

Compare a passage here with one from Can’t Get Enough. Let the comparison remain specific: the duration of an introduction, the amount of space around a line or the way the rhythm carries a transition. Small musical choices are a more useful guide than assuming that all romantic soul records work in the same way.