continuing lp excavations: one of my favorite acts of the 80s was the bellamy brothers. if you are me, you hesitate on that a bit: you want to say you were listening to george jones or whatever it may be. the bellamy brothers are no hardass country act, but represent one of the basic pop modes of the era. there are many gimmicks, jokes, etc. ("if i said you had a beautiful body", "lovers live longer".) it's a sort of guilty pleasure.
and yet i'm not guilty at all. they had a bunch of great songs. the arrangements and vocals are extremely straightforward and have aged well. some of these songs have been running through my head intermittently since 1985; these are some of the songs i find myself humming, whistling, etc. most often. one move they made was to try to integrate reggae into country, sometimes rather primitively ("get into reggae, cowboy"). still they actually play it well for good ole boys.
it's not always the case that greatest hits packages are the best representations of their artists, of course, but i do think that's the case here. if i'm recalling correctly, "greatest hits, volume 2" was one of the last lp's i bought before switching to cd's. or maybe it was among the last lp's that record labels sent me in my capacity as a critic, before they all switched to cd's.
that is a very beautiful song, i think.
