Making Every Moment Count

Making Every Moment Count was Peter Allen's eighth solo studio album of new material and his solo tenth album overall, if you threw in his two live LPs. It was also his first collection of new recordings in seven years, although in that stretch he had focused on writing and starring in his Broadway musical Legs Diamond, also appearing on the 1989 original cast album. The project was not entirely forgotten here: Allen teamed with Harry Connick, Jr. to duet on "When I Get My Name in Lights" from the score. He also combined voices with Melissa Manchester, who had scored a hit with his song "Don't Cry Out Loud," on the title song, a touching ballad. These may have been nods to his past, but otherwise Allen was very up to date on Making Every Moment Count, employing five different producers to come up with a recording that had a timely sound, complete with icy synthesizer riffs and programmed drums coming on like torpedoes. (Of course, this effort to make the music sound trendy for 1990 only made it sound dated a few years later.) Nowhere was the contemporary sound more apparent than on the leadoff track, "Tonight You Made My Day," which was vaguely reminiscent of Christopher Cross' "Ride Like the Wind." Happily, Allen remained musically eclectic, with "When I Get My Name in Lights" having a 1930s swing sound appropriate to Legs Diamond, and "Why Not?" in a smooth jazz style. But he remained most affecting on the ballads, which had a poignancy that would be accentuated by Allen's death from AIDS in 1992, making the album his final one. In that context, the concluding song, "Love Don't Need a Reason," with its final line, "What we don't have is time," seemed heartbreakingly appropriate. It was Allen's last great song, and helped turn his last album into a valedictory statement.