Independent review

The relative popularity of Chris Norman and Smokie in England quickly dried up, and the previous record The Montreaux Album became the last successful one for the collective. The remnants of European love still went to The Other Side, but this was the beginning of the end. And it is truly a shame. On one hand, this led to the fact that we eventually got the poppy (in a good sense of the word) Chris Norman in cooperation with Dieter Bohlen, but on the other, we lost Smokie, who had entered their best period. Norman and his comrades never distinguished themselves by special originality, their business was to write excellent glam-pop-rock hits, memorable from the first chords. And while they succeeded at this, luck accompanied them either in the hit parades of their native Britain, or in sales that reached silver status. But then the band decided that it was time to change - time goes on and one must keep pace with it. And they began to act diversely. At the same time, did the bomb hits disappear? Come on, drop it! Everything remained at the level in terms of melodics and choruses. And the general average level of the albums' material, on the contrary, grew. And if the standard Smokie hits from The Montreaux Album all went into the top 20, then on The Other Side, failure awaited them. Neither sales, nor hit parades. I see several reasons for this. People are not ready when such simple bands begin to change. And the changes were already noticeable a year ago. And the main failure is the choice of singles. The musicians chose all the tracks from the record that could have claimed to be canonical Smokie hits and released them as singles. But none of them reach the level of the team's top things from the charts. Yet the disc's title track The other side of the road, the ballad Belinda (that one could have reached everyone, including lovers of radio hits), the epic London is burning and the rocking All alone or the purely Lennon-esque Samantha Elizabeth (Beatles melodics are traditionally present in other compositions too) were bypassed by attention. Thus, the new fans remained of the old opinion about the band, and the old ones decided that the musicians had written themselves out.

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