Thanks for starting this review thread mate
This was Amy's first attempt to go mainstream and it was a big success in America in '85 when it came out.
Personally I like the album. Amy's songwriters come up with some good, intelligent pop composership especially on the song Fight which has a long instrumental intro and Amy's lyrics are pretty good on the whole. I think Amy really went out on a limb with this one, went out into the "big bad world", and it shows in that it reached the top 40 on the Billboard 200. Obviously she went hardcore mainstream with Heart in Motion in 1991, which I think holds the record for the most succesful "gospel" album ever recorded.
However, Unguarded, is disregarded by CCM music critics. I've looked at lists of top CCM albums and none of them include this album. Lead Me On, Age to Age and even Heart in Motion appear on them (Lead Me On was actually ranked at #1 by a list done by CCM magazine in 2000), but not Unguarded. One of the lists was a top 500 done by a guy who clearly knows his CCM and yet he calls Unguarded a pasty, plastic pop album. I still can't understand this attitude.