1. Made to Love
2. That's Just Too Much
3. Stick With Me Baby
4. Baby What You Want Me to Do
5. Sigh, Cry, Almost Die
6. Always It's You *
7. Love Hurts *
8. Lucille
9. So How Come (No One Loves Me)
10. Donna, Donna
11. A Change of Heart
12. Cathy's Clown *
B+
With a title like A Date With The Everly Brothers you'd expect a lot of sultry crooning and paeans to the power of romance. Instead, most of the songs on this album are about the pitfalls of love. In "Love Hurts" and "Cathy's Clown", you even have two of the truly great songs about just how much love can suck. The rest of this album can't even come close to matching the greatness of those two songs, but it still manages to be a fun (if largely forgettable) listen.
The twin strengths of the Everlys are peerless close-harmony vocals and a commitment to interesting arrangements. The result is an album that is incredibly pleasant to listen to. The Brothers twist and twine their way through some very innovative vocal melodies. The band has a rich, layered sound that takes the many disparate elements of rock and country and then applies a Big Band-esque complexity to the arrangements, with results that sometimes seem to anticipate Phil Spector's famous Wall of Sound. And on songs like "Love Hurts" and the incredibly pretty "Always It's You" the results are gorgeous.
Unfortunately most of the material fails to be a match for the incredible musical ability on display. "Made to Love" is a brilliant slice of sunshine pop, but it's kind of hurt by having incredibly outdated lyrics - namely, that girls are made to love, and that if you're ever in doubt about whether you should kiss one, you should just remember that fact. It's unfortunate, as the song is very catchy. The rest of the songs are the typical grab bag of "She Done Him Wrong" and "Why Does No One Love Me" nonsense. It's all very pretty but kind of uninteresting lyrically, although as a lonely sad sack I couldn't help but be moved a bit by "So How Come (No One Loves Me)".
So I guess this is a pretty typical pop album, with all the good and bad that entails. You have a couple of truly brilliant songs carefully positioned amidst a bunch of OK ones. The whole thing is fun and pretty but not very engaging on a lyrical level for anyone who isn't a teenage girl in 1960. And I was only ever a teenage girl for a few minutes in 1997 (don't ask). The level of craftsmanship on display is jaw dropping, and on a musical level it's a very impressive album, but not impressive enough to elevate the "I just bought a rhyming dictionary" lyrics. Still, "Love Hurts" is everything good about 60s pop, and "Cathy's Clown" stands alone on this album as a dark and mature look at the little hells romance can drag you into.
If you like this sort of thing, I'd definitely recommend it. It really is quite a good album.
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