8 Great Hits: Steve Green

With this self-titled solo debut album, inspirational vocalist Steve Green left behind a career as a background singer for the likes of Sandi Patti and the Gaither Vocal Band, as well as lead singer and keyboard duties for the Christian Contemporary pop/rock band White Rock, in order to initiate what was to become a long and prolific tenure as the industry's best-known purveyor of orchestrated praise tunes. Steve Green also marked the first collaboration between Green and Greg Nelson, the man who would produce the bulk of the ensuing avalanche of inflated ebullience released by Green under the Sparrow label. On the debut record, Nelson not only produced but joined praise-music luminaries like Bill and Gloria Gaither, Phil McHugh, and Melodie and Dick Tunney in writing the songs. Green's rangy tenor is as powerful as ever on this album, but the songwriting and the keyboard and string arrangements are not as memorable as on some of the later records. It has a tendency to languish in well-worn Christian music clichés, both lyrically and musically. And the 13-voice cheerful background vocals by Green's "Choral Group" (which includes Karla Worley, who was later to launch her own solo career) becomes irritatingly chirpy by the end of the album. A promising beginning, but there were better things to come.