Ear Candy is the title of the tenth album release by Australian-American pop singer Helen Reddy; released May 1977 by Capitol Records, the album included a modern take on the doo-wop genre (“Long Distance Love”), a Cajun number that gave the Melbourne native her first and only appearance on Billboard magazine’s Country chart (“Laissez les Bontemps Rouler”), and a dark self-parody on which Reddy proclaims: “I don't take no shit from nobody” (“Baby, I’m a Star”). Unprecedented for a Helen Reddy album, half of the songs recorded for Ear Candy were co-written by Reddy herself, including the second single, “The Happy Girls”, Reddy’s first self-penned A-side single since “I am Woman”; however, it was the first single, a remake of the 1964 Cilla Black hit “You’re My World”, which would afford Reddy a final Top 40 hit. (More from Wikipedia)
As I remember, the interview that was spread across the cover of Living in the Streets was where I first learned that Kim Fowley had worked with Helen Reddy, of “I Am Woman” fame – specifically, her albums Ear Candy (1977) and We’ll Sing In The Sunshine (1978). Of the long list of musicians and bands who worked with Kim – and there have been dozens of them that I have learned about myself – she is the most surprising.
About Ear Candy, the album that I have, Stephen Thomas Erlewine writing in Allmusic says: “Ear Candy qualifies as a genuine oddity in Helen Reddy’s catalog, a record that finds the queen of Australian soft rock paired with the king of L.A. sleaze, Kim Fowley, and his henchman Earle Mankey, a pair who were just coming off of the teenage kicks of the Runaways. Fowley and Mankey pushed Reddy toward unusual territory, but that doesn’t mean they lead her toward the gutter: They encouraged Reddy to write, prompting a surprising five originals on this ten-track album, let her dabble with synthesizers on the lurching ‘Long Distance Love’, and had her do a Cajun stomp with ‘Laissez Les Bon Tempts Rouler’ [French for “Let the Good Times Roll”, and a frequent slogan down here in Mardi Gras country]. . . . [W]hile there are no big hits here, there are few dull spots, and the odd moments help make this one of Reddy’s most interesting LPs.”
(January 2015/1)
