Beyond Appearances
| Santana
Beyond Appearances
Beyond Appearances is the fourteenth studio album by Santana, released in 1985 (see 1985 in music). The album took seven months to make, and (apart from Carlos Santana himself) involved a completely different line-up from Santana's previous album (released two and a half years earlier). It was firmly in the style of the 1980s, making much use of synthesizers and drum machines. Beyond Appearances performed relatively poorly, reaching only fifty on the Billboard album chart; one of its tracks, "Say It Again", reached number 46 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart (though it performed better on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, reaching number fifteen)-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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AllMusic
. . . this latest pop interpretation of the Santana sound did not endear it to fans, and, at a peak of Number 50, Beyond Appearances was the lowest charting Santana album yet.
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Rolling Stone
June 21, 1989. There’s still a lot of power to Santana, but it gets squandered pretty thoroughly on this album, as producer Val Garay shoehorns the band into a series of unflattering and ill-managed bids for mass-market acceptance.
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Jazz Music Archives
April 26, 2011. If you must avoid one record from this otherwise gret group, this would be the one. Apart from another great artwork sleeve, this album has nothing to go for itself.
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People
April 29, 1985. Like the group’s three other retrograde releases since then, Beyond Appearances lacks the fireworks of early Santana. . . . .here is still only one Carlos Santana, but he should stop trying to masquerade as a jukebox. He’s much too talented to waste time on the pop drivel that dominates this album.
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The Great Albums
Unfortunately, this is also the most dated-sounding of Santana’s ‘80s discs, not in the least due to the production of Val Garay . . ., who bathes everything in a wash of glossy synths and drum machines.
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