Chicago
Chicago 17

Warm spring day in 1984 in Los Angeles, billboards announce the new Chicago LP, "17". The band's logo is on the cover masked behind a wrapping paper, a shipment of AOR power for all the radios in the world.

"17" adjusts and perfects the aim of "16" with an impressive sequence of hits sung and composed by Cetera, videos designed for continuous rotation on MTV, impeccable production by David Foster. What may be the pinnacle of the AOR genre is an album built on well-structured, catchy songs, and you can already sense it from the first beats of Seraphine (or perhaps Jeff Porcaro, it was never clarified) in the opening track of "Stay the Night". A monumental song sung by Cetera with many choruses that soak into the mind without letting go, a cunning video that embodies '80s hedonism in all its facets. "Remember the Feeling" is the big ballad closing Side A, "Along Comes A Woman" detonates in the stereo system opening Side B, a massive piece overflowing with everything...horns, guitars, Cetera's high notes, and inevitable choruses. A cheeky video for MTV frames it all. The following "You're the Inspiration" is the tear-jerking ballad, enveloping, the typical Cetera cuddly tune and it's so well-written (in collaboration with Foster) that there's nothing to criticize, of course, perfectly constructed for an MTV video. The rest is ordinary, it flows, but the heart of the album is all in these pieces to which we can add the flashy, somewhat too Toto-style, "Prima Donna".

After releasing "17", completing the tour, Cetera will leave the band to embark on a successful solo career in 1985. By now, Chicago has nothing more to say in the AOR genre, but they will continue to do so with subsequent works, structurally photocopies of this one but not equally successful, starting with the following "18" (1986) and "19" (1988) which will still manage to place hits at the top almost everywhere.