by Dave Thompson By late 1965, Cliff Richard was having serious doubts about his continued role in pop. He had recently rediscovered Christianity and, years later, acknowledged that he was suddenly questioning whether a continued career in rock & roll was even possible. Songs which he might once have recorded without a second thought now seemed somehow wrong -- maybe the lyric was too racy, maybe the rhythm too raunchy. Today he acknowledges, "a lot of [new Christians] create problems for themselves because they want to change what they themselves are." However, he also admits that it would take another year, and a very near brush with retirement, before he realized that fact for himself. The first fruit of that confusion, Love Is Forever was as smooth, slick, and professional as any Richard album could be. But that was all you could say about it. Almost without exception, its contents rank among the most uninspiring songs he had yet brought together. A redundant rendering of "Fly Me to the Moon" is only one of several nadirs plumbed; the insipid "Through the Eye of a Needle" just the worst of too many insubstantial jingles. There is a passable version of "A Summer Place," and "Paradise Lost" is at least buoyed along by an attractively dramatic arrangement. But the best song in sight is the mid-tempo Shadows by numbers of "Someday (You'll Want Me to Love You," and even that scarcely rouses itself beyond the level of human Muzak. In seeking out the songs least likely to raise controversy or comment, Richard had also succeeded in uncovering some of the blandest confections of the age -- and, in turn, provoked more outrage than he could ever have imagined. Love Is Forever spent one week in the U.K. Top 20 (at number 19), then vanished without a trace. Oblivion, even his greatest fans admit, was the best place for it.