Richard Perry's 1978 production of the self-titled Leo Sayer album is one of the artist's most serious and heartfelt, though it only generated a minor hit in the cover of the Boudleau Bryant\u002FFelice Bryant tune Raining in My Heart. With Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham on electric guitar, Waddy Wachtel on slide guitar, and Ben Benay on acoustic, the performance and production of that particular song offers much on an album that is equally impressive. James Brown\u002FRussell Smith's Dancing the Night Away, with David Lindley's important and unobtrusive fiddle and steel guitar, and Stormy Weather, the Tom Snow\u002FLeo Sayer collaboration which opens the album, all work in unison, providing evidence that Sayer had superstardom just within his grasp. It's also interesting to note the recurring themes, from the previous album's Thunder in My Heart hit single to this album's Raining in My Heart, or the aforementioned Dancing the Night Away as a loose sequel to his first number one hit, You Make Me Feel Like Dancing. Perry's production is perfect, and it's interesting to note that the engineer here, Bill Schnee, wasn't able to give Kiki Dee the same finesse for her Stay With Me album which he produced this same year, with some of the same musicians, like Jeff Porcaro, Steve Lukather, Tom Snow, James Newton Howard (Sayer's musical director), David Paich, Davey Johnstone...that's a lot of overlap on two distinctly different albums. Lindsey Buckingham plays acoustic guitar and provides backing vocals with Sayer on the cover of Jackson Browne's Something Fine and stays on board for the next number, a Tom Snow co-write with Johnny Vastano that is Running to My Freedom. This musical composite should have been dynamite on the charts, the soulful vocals adding to the style of music the Eagles, Jackson Browne, and Fleetwood Mac were all so successful with at this point in time. Perhaps the straying from the style he was so comfortable with on the previous outing hurt Sayer at radio. Ray Parker, Jr. co-writes Frankie Lee with Sayer, and it's some strange folk\u002Ffunk combo which, like the Thunder in My Heart album, is a diversion which throws the listener. Two Tom Snow\u002FLeo Sayer compositions end this unique snapshot, the harder-rocking Don't Look Away and the closing ballad No Looking Back. The artist would look back as David Courtney came back to produce 1979's Here, and in 1980, Sayer would achieve chart success again with the Alan Tarney-produced Living in a Fantasy, but this Richard Perry\u002FLeo Sayer combination was a very worthwhile venture, and this album is one of the artist's most respectable in a large body of good work.