Luther's first three albums (1981's Never Too Much, 1982's Forever, For Always, For Love and 1983's Busy Body) would be at the top of my list for 5.1 or Atmos remixes - great songwriting between Vandross and Marcus Miller, a super-hot band that included Miller and Yogi Horton (one of the most underrated drummers of all time) and an embarassment of riches between the horn, string and backing vocal arrangements.
For many years - and partially thanks to growing up in the late '80s and early '90s - I was under the (misguided) impression that Vandross was just a schmaltzy ballad singer, sort of like a more soulful version of Celine Dion, Michael Bolton and the like, who it seemed like were constantly on the charts in those days, with all these overwrought, overproduced, cloyingly sentimental ballads. Then at some point I heard Never Too Much (the song) and had a little lightbulb moment when I thought to myself "if he has one song like this, there must be at least one or two others" so I dug into these early albums, and much to my surprise they're almost uniformly great examples of post-disco R&B, and maybe even more surprisingly, a 50/50 (or better) split between ballads and uptempo material
