I've Put An End To Worrying! I Learned The Way From Will!

Will Powers was the creation of rock photographer Lynn Goldsmith (with musical and songwriting assistance from longtime friends and biz contacts as Todd Rundgren, Sting and Andy Summers of The Police, Steve Winwood, Tom Bailey of the Thompson Twins, and Nile Rodgers), and it remains her sole venture in the world of recording.

Signed as the first "optic-music" artist to Island Records, the only album ever released by Will Powers was 1983's Dancing For Mental Health: an intermittently condescending, occasionally hypnotic, and flat-out weird self-help pop record that cheerfully offered up handy advice on dating, personal motivation and dealing with depression amongst other topics. Despite the rather creepy effect of some of the tracks (Goldsmith's vocodered voice is not terribly different from that of Marvin The Martian), Will Powers found recognition in the strangest of places as the videos shot Dancing For Mental Health ended up being utilized by the U.S. Department of Labor, Harvard University and the National Marriage Counsel in the U.K. (two of these videos reside to this day in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City). Hell, even MTV showed them a few times in their rotation (it was 1983, after all).

While other 1980s "virtual celebs" as, say, Max Headroom, or MC Skat Kat (or, more currently, Gorillaz) at least had a definable gender or face, Will Powers was a rather faceless creation, not even appearing on the cover of Dancing For Mental Health. While a couple of the now-hilariously clunky videos shot for the album occasionally featured Goldsmith's face lip-syncing along to the music, most of the time Will Powers appeared only as a crudely computer-animated face of nonspecific gender with Goldsmith's electronically-altered voice pitched somewhere in the Pat/Chris sexual netherworld in order for the record to address both sexes from a neutral viewpoint.

Whatever you might think about the primitive sound of the record or the idea of getting "you are a special flower" advice from an aesexual, computer generated version of Stuart Smalley, you gotta admit that Dancing For Mental Health is certainly a unique record in the annals of pop music (I certainly can't think of anything remotely like Will Powers that has come out since, for better or worse).

I leave you now with the commercial apex of the Will Powers project: the single "Kissing With Confidence." A Hungry Man-sized serving of self-improvement with thick cheese topping (I blame the backing vocals for this more than anything else), this silly sounding, yet undeniably infectious ode to better smooching is, if nothing else, the least insanely annoying track on the whole record. Featuring a sunny vocal assist from none other than Carly Simon, this single became another one of those improbable chart hits in the U.K., reaching the Top 20 in the fall of 1983.

Will Powers "Kissing With Confidence"

So, go on. Listen once. You know you want to. It's better than Arnee & The Terminators.

Hell, your better half might be thankful you did.