Kenny Loggins (WolfTrap, Vienna, VA, 4K). Wednesday June 14, 2023.

© Kenny Loggins, LLC. All rights reserved.
Their first album, Kenny Loggins With Jim Messina Sittin’ In, came out in 1971, featuring Loggins’ own version of “Pooh Corner” and the beautiful ballad “Danny’s Song,” which he’d written when his brother’s wife gave birth to the couple’s first child. “That was the beginning of his family,” Loggins remembers, “and many of those lyrics were taken right from a letter he wrote me.” The prolific recording and touring duo released a studio album every year from 1971 to 1976, wrapping with Native Sons. The time had come for Loggins to cast off on his own.
“When I recorded Celebrate Me Home, I was very excited, I was like an arrow pulled back in a bow. I’d waited 7 years to finally make my solo album,” Loggins says. His 1977 Phil Ramone-produced solo debut went platinum and included “I Believe in Love,” the song he’d written for Barbra Streisand to perform in the film A Star Is Born. The album came out just in time for Loggins to score a gig opening for Fleetwood Mac on the Rumours tour, and he went from playing large rooms to arenas overnight. He struck up a friendship with Stevie Nicks, who generously offered to sing one of his songs. Loggins wrote the perfect tune with his friend, Melissa Manchester - “Whenever I Call You Friend” from his 1978 LP Nightwatch - which he credits as “the moment that launched my solo career.”
The hits just kept on coming. Loggins pulled up for a songwriting session at Michael McDonald’s house and heard the opening melody of “What a Fool Believes” coming out of the door. “He stopped playing after 8 bars, but my imagination kept going. So I like to say we were writing together before we met.” The pair won a Best Song Grammy - Loggins’ first - for the tune in 1979. The following year, the pair picked up a second Grammy for “This Is It,” off Loggins’ third consecutive platinum solo album, Keep the Fire. As the decade progressed, Loggins kept expanding his musical range, impressively exploring new textures of jazz, rock, and pop with ambitious production.
In the 1980s, Loggins also earned a new title: king of the movie soundtrack. Film producer Jon Peters called him in to see a rough cut of Caddyshack, and Loggins provided the cult classic’s smash “I’m Alright.” When a pal asked Loggins to write a few songs for an as-yet-unmade picture called Footloose, he whipped up a No. 1 blockbuster: “I had a little up-tempo thing I’d been messing with that I probably wouldn’t have written if it hadn’t have been for the movie,” Loggins says. He scored a track on Tom Cruise’s Top Gun (“Playing With the Boys”) and performed that movie’s indelible hit “Danger Zone.”
The group released its debut album, Finally Home, on its own record label, 3Dream Records, in January 2013. Their second album, Why Not, was recorded in 2015. If you’re lucky, you’ll stumble onto Kenny, Gary and Georgia sittin’ in somewhere, like the Bluebird in Nashville. On June 12, 2021, Loggins released At The Movies - a Record Store Day exclusive vinyl that included some of his career-spanning soundtrack hits for the first time ever on one album, including “I’m Alright” (Caddyshack), “Footloose” (Footloose), “Danger Zone” (Top Gun), and many more.
His hit song “Danger Zone” was featured once again in Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick, which opened in theaters worldwide on May 27, 2022. The film has become the biggest release of the year earning over $1.5B in box offices globally and saw “Danger Zone” earning over 1M streams per day across streaming services at its peak.
Though he’s got 12 platinum albums, a pair of Grammys, and hits on almost all the Billboard charts under his belt, Loggins is far from done. Having just released his latest children’s project, the book Footloose (Moondance Press, an imprint of Quarto Publishing Group USA, October 17, 2016), inspired by his 1985 Oscar® nominated and Grammy® Award-winning “Song of the Year,” he’s still looking forward to what’s next. “I feel very lucky that this is the way I make my living, and not a lot of people can say that,” Loggins says. “I’ve been lucky that I love what I do and I get to keep doing it.”
On June 14, 2022, Hachette Books published Still Alright, Loggins’ long-awaited memoir. In Still Alright, Loggins gives fans a candid and entertaining perspective on his life and career as one of the most noteworthy musicians of the 1970s and ’80s.
© Kenny Loggins, LLC. All rights reserved.