Forgotten 45: "Isn't It Time"

Dylan Thomas wrote some famous lines about not going gently into that good night--of death--and suggested that it would be better to rage against the dying of the light. Which is precisely what the Babys do on "Isn't It Time." Lead singer John Waite and a fevered female chorus sing about the impending death of a love affair as if they were trying to hold back actual, physical destruction. Waite, who always sounds as if he's struggling to keep an emotional outburst in check, sounds quite nearly unhinged here--but in a good way. On "Isn't It Time," the singers are desperate people caught in a hurricane, and who think that the best way to survive the storm is to rage at it just as hard as it's raging at them.

(Chrysalis 2173; chart peak #13, December 24, 1977)