Robin Beck will forever be known as ‘the singer from that Coca-Cola ad’. While The First Time remains an 80s AOR classic, she’s had a hard time matching that song’s success in the ensuing decades.
New album Love Is Coming is unlikely to shake off the ‘One Hit Wonder’ tag, but she can take solace in the fact that it’s a fine record in its own right. Beck’s fine-grained voice has lost none of its belting power – On The Bright Side is four minutes of melodic rock brilliance. Better still it has the kind of meaty production (courtesy of Beck’s husband James Christian) that many latter-day hard rock records lack.
It doesn’t always hit home – the cheese-ball funky rock of Me Just Being Me veers too close to Shania Twain territory – but there’s enough here to indicate that things don’t always go better with Coke.