Air Supply

Consider this: Jordache Jeans was the corporate sponsor for Air Supply's 1983 world tour. That fact tells you almost everything you need to know about this well-worn Australian duo. Their sound may be as dated as a pair of stonewashed, tight-rolled Jordache jeans, but there is much to love about Air Supply and their legacy of effete balladry. Air Supply were kings of soft rock, a mantle that relegates them to their own musical leper colony. Mock the art form all you want: Soft rock speaks of the eternal struggle of love and loss, and Air Supply bored into the heart's sappy, saccharine center better than any other.

It's been more than 30 years since Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock began writing and performing together, hitting an impressive run of hit singles in the early '80s. Can you deny the epic bombast of "Making Love Out of Nothing At All" or the tear-stained pathos of "All Out of Love"? But that was 20 years ago, and the band has done little to regain their former glory. Air Supply may be stuck on the casino lounge circuit, but maybe that's where they're needed most, healing the lost and broken. Imagine yourself, strung out on whisky sours and roulette, wishing you were anywhere but the lonely bar at Harrah's Casino. Savior-like, Air Supply sings to you over the loudspeakers, sinking directly into the cleft of your broken heart: "I'm all out of love, I'm so lost without you / I know you were right to say that I was so wrong." It may just save your life.