Real Life - Lifetime (1990)

In the wake of "Send Me an Angel '89"'s success, David Sterry decided to continue Real Life without co-founder Richard Zatorski -- and it took him a while to get his footing. While the late-'90s incarnation of Real Life added some goth to its mettle and made for some frightening new wave hybrid music, Lifetime seems too willing to coast on the formula Sterry had perfected. "God Tonight" is the requisite single with the requisite Real Life synth hook anchoring a perfect piece of dance-pop. But it feels less like Sterry's heart is in it and more the result of Real Life suddenly becoming a phenomenon again on the basis of the "Angel" re-release. "Kiss the Ground," "Push of Love," and "Let's Start a Fire" are all perfectly solid synth pop songs -- but, alas, the era of synth pop was over by 1990 and Sterry had yet to discover the type of music that would ultimately make Real Life great again. While it was great to have a new Real Life album (and it was still better than much of the pop music out at the time), it feels too much like a commercial product rather than a labor of passion like Heartland or Flame. "Send Me an Angel" ended up being David Sterry's albatross -- his best-known work, but one from which he could never escape. It would be nearly a decade before Sterry recovered his footing and made Real Life truly relevant -- and truly scary -- again.