Happy 30th: Chicago, Chicago 18

30 years ago today, Chicago released their first album of the post-Cetera era and handily proved that the absence of one of the band’s most familiar vocalists wasn’t going to cause their commercial fortunes to peter out. (See what we did there?)

Given the number of hits that Chicago had scored with Peter Cetera singing lead vocals, the mainstream audience’s reaction to his departure was a reasonable concern, but in a effort which seemed to say, “Hey, we’re still the same band you know and love,” the band opted to bring back David Foster to produce the album, giving the music the same sheen as its previous album. In addition, they selected as the first single from 18 a song that had already been a hit for the band once before: “25 or 6 to 4.”

The end result was that the band’s newest singer, Jason Scheff, found himself crooning a track that hit #48 on the Billboard Hot 100. Not really what you’d call a smash hit, but certainly a little bit of proof that Chicago was still viable as a hit-making machine. Proving this fact definitively was their next single, “Will You Still Love Me?” A epic romantic ballad, the song went all the way to #3, and the follow-up, “If She Would Have Been Faithful,” turned out to be a top-20 hit in its own right.

No, it wasn’t quite at the point where people were snorting and saying, “Peter who?” But Chicago 18 nonetheless served as a strong reminder that the band could make it sans Cetera.