For 27 years, the American band Chicago had not put a live album on shelves in the United States. Not since 1971, when Chicago at Carnegie Hall captured their early brass-driven energy, and not since 1972, when Live in Japan preserved another night of the same era. Then, on 12 October 1999, the group released Chicago XXVI: Live in Concert, their twenty-sixth album and only their second US concert record.
A live album after 27 years
The gap mattered because Chicago had changed. The 1999 album came from a late lineup, recorded in July that year and released on the band's own Chicago Records label. It was a chance to prove that the band still worked as a live act, not just a studio memory from the 1980s and early 1990s. The record is built mostly from concert versions of the group's hits.
Among those hits, the set reaches back to early material. 'Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon' appears in a 13-minute-29-second live take, a long workout for the horn section and the band's older fans. The tracklist also includes '25 or 6 to 4', 'Beginnings', 'Feelin' Stronger Every Day', and 'Just You 'n' Me'. Those songs anchor the album in the sound that made Chicago famous before softer ballads took over the charts.
Three studio tracks and outside producers
Then the record takes a strange turn. After the live material, three new studio recordings close the album. These tracks were produced by Roy Bittan and Mervyn Warren, outside producers brought in for a different finish. One of them, '(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher', features Michael McDonald on lead vocals, though he is not a member of Chicago. The song is credited to Jackie Wilson.
The other two new studio songs are 'If I Should Ever Lose You' and 'Back to You'. 'If I Should Ever Lose You' was written by Burt Bacharach and Tonio K. For a band that had spent the 1980s chasing polished pop hits, ending a live album with three studio cuts was a risk. It promised something fresh but also broke the concert-record illusion the first hour had built.
Mixed reviews and no chart entry
The reception was split in exactly that spot. Chicago XXVI: Live in Concert did not enter the charts in the US or the UK. But a retrospective review at AllMusic called the album a return to form after a slump in the early 1990s. The reviewer singled out the performances of the band's early songs and noted the absence of material from the late 1980s. The same review criticized the three studio tracks at the end.
That tension is the story of the album: a live record that tried to be two things at once. Chicago wanted to reclaim their stage power with old hits, then used the final minutes to test new songs and outside voices. It was the band's own label, their own late lineup, and their own gamble that both halves could coexist on one disc.
What followed suggests the experiment did not define their next move. The group's next release was a compilation, The Very Best of Chicago: Only the Beginning, in 2002. For Chicago XXVI: Live in Concert, the live half earned the praise, while the studio coda took the blame. The album remains a snapshot of a band caught between honoring its past and reaching for a new ending.