THOM BELL AND LINDA CREED: LOVE IS THE MESSAGE
Songwriting credits in today’s music industry read like names of prestigious law firms. It’s not uncommon to list five or six names as co-writers. Factor in samples/ interpolations and the number grows---a far cry from the days when writing and production teams were crews who worked in twos (and threes). Ask your typical music aficionado these days to run down their short list of great songwriting tandems and they just might stop at LA and Babyface or Jam and Lewis and overlook the prolific genius predating contemporary R&B. Producer/arranger Thom Bell and lyricist Linda Creed helped brand the Sound of Philadelphia as the preeminent music during the first half of the 1970s. They would weave a string of Top Ten million-sellers into the tapestry of the Stylistics' three gold albums--- The Styli