Before Rod Stewart picked up Russell Hitchcock and Graham Russell to open for one of his tours in the late 1970s, the world wasn't exactly gasping for Air Supply. For a number of years Hitchcock and Russell, the two main elements of Air Supply, had been suffocating in Australia while trying to make it on their own as a musical duo. One single, "Love and Other Bruises," achieved a certain fleeting, wheezing success in the late 1970s on radio stations Down Under. But with that singular exception, Air Supply might have faded into oblivion without ever having given the world their brand of soft rock.

Everything changed after Rod Stewart, who was already a pop and soft rock star, gave Air Supply a chance. After touring with Stewart for a short time, the band signed with Arista and began producing hit single after hit single. In the early 1980s you couldn't turn on a radio in America, England or Australia for more than a few minutes before the soothing, reflective voices of Russell and Hitchcock filled the air. "Lost in Love," "All Out of Love," "Every Woman in the World," "The One That You Love," "Here I Am," "Making Love out of Nothing at All" and "Even the Nights Are Better" all broke into the top ten in the U.S. Adult Contemporary Singles charts between 1980 and 1985.

After Hearts In Motion was released in 1986, the band began to lose its appeal. Russell and Hitchcock, along with the other auxiliary members of the band, went their separate ways until the early 1990s, when the duo got back together to produce The Earth Is.... Air Supply continued to make music until the mid '90s, although their later work would never come close to rivaling the popularity of their hits a decade earlier.