Mono Mondays: The Association, Insight Out

This week’s Mono Monday release is the album that helped The Association survive the sophomore slump of 1967’s Renaissance by virtue of one of its singles taking the group to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for the second time in their career.

First of all, we should clarify that our use of the phrase “sophomore slump” is only in regards to the commercial success of Renaissance, which already had a hard row to hoe in the wake of the band’s debut album, And Then…Along Comes The Association, which hit #5 on the Billboard Top 200 and provided the band with their first top-10 single (“Along Comes Mary”) and their first chart-topper (“Cherish”). The Association’s decision to make Renaissance a completely self-penned album was certainly a way of taking their career into their own hands, but songs like “Pandora’s Golden Heebie Jeebies” and “No Fair At All” just didn’t grab listeners as readily as the material on their debut effort.

With Insight Out, The Association found the best possible middle ground between their first two albums by including five of the 10 songs written by the members of the band, with Terry Kirkman compositions opening the record (“Wasn’t It a Bit Like Now?”) and closing it (“Requiem for the Masses”), plus songs by Ted Bluechel (“We Love Us”), Jim Yester (“When Love Comes to Me”), and Russ Giguere (“Sometime”) in the mix as well. As for the other five songs…well, you probably know two of them already: Ruthann Friedman’s “Windy” became The Association’s second chart-topping single, while “Never My Love,” written by Don and Dick Addrisi, hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 but actually topped the Cashbox singles chart. In addition, the Addrisi brothers also contributed “Happiness Is,” and the group tackled P.F. Sloan’s “On a Quiet Night” and Tim Hardin’s “Reputation” as well.

Insight Out wasn’t quite as successful for The Association as their debut had been, but it still provided them with their second top-10 album, reaching #8 and going gold, and – better yet – it went on to provide the creative team of Breaking Bad with one of the most darkly hysterical musical montages in the history of a show that was already pretty brilliant to begin with.

But just because you know the singles from an album doesn’t mean you really know the album, so now’s a great chance to educate yourself further on this classic by The Association. Until you’ve listened to it from top to bottom, you won’t know everything there is to love about Insight Out.