A former Miss Canada finalist, Mary-Lu Zahalan might have only released two proper studio albums during her solo music career, but her "Turn of the Wheel" remains one of my favorite AOR songs of all time.
I stumbled upon "Turn of the Wheel" one day while CD shopping at a store called Sounds in New York City's Greenwich Village in the early '90s. I was browsing through the used section when I noticed a sticker on one of the discs that read: "For fans of Pat Benatar and Laura Branigan." It was Mary-Lu Zahalan's Think of Me album from 1982. I had never heard of her, but the description on the sticker was more than enough of an endorsement for me to put down the $5 for it.
Think of Me is definitely a product of its era. The album finds Zahalan laying her pop-kissed vocals over melodic guitar and keyboard lines through a series of tracks that touch upon everything from AOR to soft ballads to horn-driven rock to pop. It wasn't a surprise to find out that Zahalan achieved success at Canadian radio upon the album's original release.
But what really made me feel like I hit a homerun that day at the record store was the opening track on Think of Me, "Turn of the Wheel."
A mid-paced rocker, "Turn of the Wheel" has at least 2-3 hooks that pull you in from the very first time you hear the track. It's one of those songs where every aspect (musical arrangement, vocal melodies, background vocal parts, etc.) seemed like they were meticulously crafted together in a lab in 1982 with the sole intention of scoring FM radio domination.
She went on to release one more album, 1991's Zahalan, before retiring from the music business. In 2011, Zahalan was the first graduate with a masters degree in a program that studied The Beatles from Liverpool Hope University. Today, she's a Professor of Popular Music Theory and Performance at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.
