The Weather Girls

• Success [Columbia, 1984] B+
• Big Girls Don't Cry [Columbia, 1985] B

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Success [Columbia, 1984]
Those who find "It's Raining Men" suspiciously campy will be doubly offended to hear producer-songwriter Paul Jabara steer his reformed gospel singers into praise of the Anvil and edible men. Me, I think it's the ultimate gay disco song, four hefty-voiced black female survivors set loose on what is much more a gay than a female fantasy, and I love it--for its humor and for its uncompromising extravagance, from lyric to singing to orchestration to arrangement to beat. I tolerate the crass moments on this second long-playing contextualization because five of its six cuts make me laugh. B+

Big Girls Don't Cry [Columbia, 1985]
At a moment when soul is resurfacing as an ear-catching set of usages, a form basically independent of its original sources, these fat ladies--abetted by a new production team, and so it goes--take it one step further and make soul a cartoon, with the title cut the masterstroke. They'll cop material anywhere--debut single's from Jesse Winchester. And if at first their tricks seem inspired, by the time you get to Creedence and Neil Sedaka they're beginning to sound obvious. B