38 Special-"Special Forces" (1982)

The history of the 38 Special is curious to say the least, from a pure southern rock band from the late seventies to an AOR band with a presence on FM radio.
With their first two albums 38 Special showed a great quality but they were in the shadow of the greats of the genre such as Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers Band or The Marshall Tucker Band, so they decide to make a change of style by drifting towards more hard rock sounds with tints of melodic rock, thereby achieving to be at the peak of North American rock of the eighties.
Already with their 1979 album "Rockin Into The Night" they began their decisive change, in addition to achieving the decisive collaboration in the composition of Survivor vocalist Jim Peterik.
With their next album "Wild Eye Southern Boys" the band gets a platinum record for their sales in an album with a clear AOR cut oriented to FM stations.
In this work Peterik even takes a lot more prominence by composing the four best songs on the album.
But it would be their fifth album "Special Forces" which would become the masterpiece of the band with a fully AOR sound with radio hits signed by the aforementioned Peterik "Caught Up In You", "You Keep Me Runnin" and "Chain Lightning".
The rest of the album is a compendium of quite commercial southern hard rock songs that maintain the general tone of a superb work that would achieve a tenth place in the charts and a platinum record.