The 1970s File Feature
This Time I'm In It For Love
This Time Im In It For Love: Players 1978 Top Ten Hit Player was a Los Angeles-based soft rock group who achieved their peak commercial success during the la…
01 The Story
This Time I’m In It For Love: Player’s 1978 Top Ten Hit
Player was a Los Angeles-based soft rock group who achieved their peak commercial success during the late 1970s with a sound rooted in melodic songwriting, lush vocal harmonies, and polished studio production. The group was formed in 1977 and consisted of Peter Beckett (lead vocals and guitar), John Charles Crowley (keyboards and vocals), Ronn Moss (bass and vocals), and Wayne Cook (keyboards). Their debut album, also titled Player, was released on RSO Records in 1977 and contained their signature hit “Baby Come Back,” which spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1978 and became one of the defining soft rock ballads of the decade.
“This Time I’m In It For Love” was also drawn from that debut album and followed “Baby Come Back” onto the charts as the album continued to sustain commercial momentum. It entered the Billboard Hot 100 on March 11, 1978, debuting at number 79. The single climbed consistently over its chart run, reaching positions of 65, 50, 39, and 37 before eventually peaking at number 10 on June 3, 1978. With a total of 17 weeks on the chart, the track demonstrated exceptional commercial longevity and confirmed that Player’s debut album had the depth to generate multiple top-ten hits.
The production of Player’s debut album was handled by Dennis Lambert, a veteran pop producer who had worked with artists including the Four Tops, Glen Campbell, and later produced significant hit records for a variety of mainstream pop acts. Lambert understood how to construct recordings that maximized the accessibility of melodic songwriting without sacrificing sophistication of arrangement. The production of “This Time I’m In It For Love” reflected this sensibility, featuring immaculately layered vocal harmonies, clean guitar work, and a rhythm section that provided forward momentum without overwhelming the melodic content.
RSO Records, the label that released the Player debut, was at the peak of its commercial power in 1977 and 1978, largely due to its association with Robert Stigwood’s entertainment empire and its pivotal role in the Saturday Night Fever and Grease soundtracks. The label’s marketing infrastructure and radio promotion capabilities were formidable during this period, which benefited Player significantly in getting their singles onto the playlists of the format-radio stations that controlled mainstream pop airplay.
Peter Beckett and John Charles Crowley were the primary songwriters within Player, and their collaboration produced material that fit cleanly within the soft rock format that dominated mainstream radio in the late 1970s. This format prized melodic accessibility, emotional directness, and production cleanliness over experimentation or edge. Acts like the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Christopher Cross, and Air Supply were among the commercial contemporaries operating in adjacent territory, and Player’s success reflected a genuine audience appetite for that kind of carefully crafted melodic rock.
The peak position of number 10 for “This Time I’m In It For Love” made Player one of the few acts in the 1970s to extract two consecutive top-ten singles from a debut album. This achievement underscored the exceptional quality of the songwriting and production on their first record. The album itself reached number 26 on the Billboard 200, a strong performance for a debut, and the label continued to invest in the act as a result of these chart showings.
Ronn Moss, the bassist for Player, subsequently became widely recognized for his work as an actor on the television soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful, which began in 1987 and on which he continued to perform for over two decades. This later career trajectory gave Player an unusual cultural afterlife, as Moss’s television fame occasionally renewed public interest in the group’s music. However, at the time of “This Time I’m In It For Love’s” chart run in the spring and early summer of 1978, Player was operating at the height of their commercial relevance as a recording act.
The summer of 1978 was a competitive period for soft rock on the Hot 100, with numerous established and emerging acts competing for radio and retail attention. Player’s ability to sustain a single at number 10 for multiple weeks amid that competition spoke to the genuine commercial appeal of their material and the effectiveness of RSO’s promotional effort on their behalf. “This Time I’m In It For Love” remains one of the better examples of late-1970s soft rock craftsmanship.
02 Song Meaning
Commitment and Sincerity in “This Time I’m In It For Love”
“This Time I’m In It For Love” by Player is built around a declaration of renewed or heightened commitment that implicitly acknowledges a prior history of less sincere engagement. The phrase “this time” is the critical modifier in the title and throughout the song: it signals that something has changed, that a previous version of the speaker’s relationship to romantic involvement was different from the present orientation. The song is thus not simply a statement of love but a statement of transformation, an assertion that the speaker has arrived at a new level of emotional seriousness.
The soft rock context of the late 1970s was well-suited to this kind of nuanced emotional declaration. The genre’s emphasis on lyrical accessibility and melodic warmth created a listening environment in which subtle psychological distinctions could be communicated without feeling clinical or detached. Peter Beckett and John Charles Crowley’s songwriting understood this dynamic, crafting lyrics that carry psychological weight while remaining emotionally transparent enough for immediate listener identification.
The implied contrast between past and present emotional states gives the song a narrative dimension that single-frame love declarations lack. The listener understands that the speaker has not always been fully present or fully committed in romantic situations, and that the current experience has prompted a qualitative change in his orientation. This acknowledgment of prior limitation adds a layer of emotional credibility to the declaration: it is harder to dismiss as mere infatuation when the speaker himself recognizes the difference between what he has felt before and what he feels now.
Player’s vocal approach, built around rich multi-part harmonies, reinforces the sincerity of the lyrical content. Harmonized vocals in pop music typically convey warmth and togetherness, and their use here creates a sonic environment in which the commitment being described feels collective and affirmed rather than provisional. The production creates a sense that multiple voices are declaring the same truth simultaneously, which amplifies the emotional conviction of the message.
The romantic optimism of “This Time I’m In It For Love” reflects a broader characteristic of late-1970s soft rock, which frequently constructed emotional narratives around the possibility of fulfilled romantic connection rather than its loss or failure. This distinguished the genre from the more melancholic or ironic perspectives found in contemporary punk or new wave recordings. Player’s material explicitly embraced romantic possibility as a viable lyrical subject, presenting adult emotional commitment as something worth celebrating and affirming.
The phrase “in it for love” also functions as a contrast to other possible motivations for entering or sustaining a relationship, including habit, obligation, fear of solitude, or social expectation. By specifying love as the operative motivation, the song draws a line between genuine emotional investment and its substitutes. This specificity is part of what gives the declaration its weight: the speaker is not simply committed to the relationship in an unexamined way but is consciously identifying love as the specific foundation of that commitment.
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