Paul Williams - A Little Bit Of Love (1974)

If Here Comes Inspiration was two steps forward, A Little Bit of Love is at least one back. It begins promisingly enough with a touching portrait of an altruistic soul ("A Little Bit of Love"), but plummets like a lead balloon into twee, sentimental excess. "Fireflies/Fun for one but twice as nice for two" croons Williams on the execrable "Sleep Warm," and it's hard not to wonder if he really buys such saccharine twaddle, or whether he's having a joke on his audience. On "Margarita" (written by Tom Jans) whose dreadful pseudo-Spanish arrangement defies belief Williams turns in his most self-indulgent, whining vocal performance ever. "Nice to Be Around" and "Loneliness" offer all too brief respite (both actually say something worthwhile), but before long Williams is inflicting cliché after cliché upon the weary listener ("That's a sad song/That used to be our song"), with seemingly indefatigable zeal. Only when you consider that Williams was stoned for over a decade, does any of this rotten, mawkish mess make sense.