Worst Rock and Roll Records Of All Time: The Stuff You Love To Hate--By: Jimmy Guterman and Owen O’Donnell : All I Have To Do Is DreamHighest chart position: number 51 (Billboard)
Love makes us all do stupid things. Couples celebrate their love in ways that look foolish to the outside world. Far too often the desire to be close to a loved one can lead you to bring him or her into parts of your life thatshould remain separate.
When you’re a celebrity, the possibilities for acting stupid in these ways increase exponentially. The romance between teenybopper idol Andy Gibb and nighttime-soap airhead Victoria Principal (Pamela Ewing on "Dallas") was big Hollywood news in the early eighties (it was especially big news to Gibb’s press agents, who no longer had Top Ten singles to flog). It helped that the two lovebirds were agreeable. Their photographs were everywhere, accompanied by brief articles in which they swore their endless love. Alas, as with most Hollywood assertions of true love, this pair didn’t last too long. (Fine by us: imagine the bland entertainer that could have resulted from that gene pool.) Heartbroken, Gibb didn’t last much longer himself.
Yet one artifact remains from the affair: a duet single by Andy and Victoria, "All I Have To Do Is Dream." And all Victoria had to do was get voice lessons. At no point in this cover of the Everly Brothers classic did executive producer Gibb let his duet partner go it alone. He covered for her, as a lover should.
But Gibb himself doesn’t have much to offer to the song. Aside from the novelty of hearing a Gibb brother warble along with someone who has an even higher voice, his vocal performance is far below even that of his hits "I Just Want To Be Your Anything" and "Shadow Dancing." Afraid of overshadowing Principal, he stays in the background: even his few solo sections are brief and deferential.
This is soft rock at its most squishy: weak drums provide no beat, mushy synthesized strings conjure up no atmosphere. All you hear in the vocals are one mediocre singer and his untalented girlfriend hamming up their few moments in the spotlight. If JR had any brains, he would have had someone follow Pamela to the studio and steal the master tapes to "All I Have To Do Is Dream," thus rescuing the Ewing family from unnecessary scandal. That would have been true love.
