Playing Your Game, Baby

There's a lighter touch here than in much of White's catalog — a slyness in the horn lines, a rhythm that has a teasing, almost conversational quality to it. The arrangement is still lush, still layered with the full orchestral apparatus, but the emotional register is more playful than smoldering, more knowing than earnest. White's delivery leans into irony in a way he doesn't always allow himself, the vocal coloring each phrase with a dry awareness of the dynamics between two people who are both performing a little for each other. The song maps the particular territory of romantic gamesmanship — the back-and-forth of two people who are attracted but not yet willing to be fully transparent about it, the enjoyment of the dance itself rather than only the destination. Musically the tempo has more lift than many of his tracks, the rhythm section giving the piece a buoyancy that keeps it from settling into his more purely sensual mode. This is late-1970s orchestral soul with one foot already feeling the pulse of what was coming — the rhythms are a little crisper, the arrangement a little more pointed. You'd put this on in the middle of an evening rather than at the end, when the mood is generous and easy, when everyone in the room still has a little energy left to spend.