Defending Patty Loveless, 24 Years Later

By Bobby Peacock

On April 9, 1999, Mark Robison of the Reno Gazette-Journal published a review of Patty Loveless's Classics in the newspaper's entertainment insert Calendar. (Link here: https://www.newspapers.com/article/reno-gazette-journal/133011767/ ) Now, I'm no stranger to hot takes myself, including a couple on Patty Loveless. Namely, I think she has about 50 songs better than "How Can I Help You Say Goodbye" (which is not to say that one its itself bad; it's just a "very good" in a sea of "excellent to legendary"); her cover of "Lovin' All Night" is by far her worst single and misses the point of the song; and her voice sticks out like a sore thumb on Alan Jackson's otherwise-great "Monday Morning Church.” But when it comes to hot takes, Robison is a Carolina reaper.

 

For those who don't know, Patty Loveless underwent vocal cord surgery in October 1992 during her transition from MCA Nashville to Epic Nashville. The overwhelming consensus in country music is that her Epic catalog in the '90s is considered some of the best country music of the entire decade, due to both her voice and overall quality control taking a massive leap. This is a consensus with which I strongly agree, and this is why I'm shocked at Robison's take. Let's break it down point by point.

 

"[T]here's less range.” I'm not sure if he means emotionally or vocally, so I'll assume both. I don't think vocal strength is defined entirely by range, although I'll address that point anyway. Loveless's voice would most likely be classified as an alto, and just looking at the sheet music shows a wider range on some of her Epic material. For example, she hits G♭3 several times on "Lonely Too Long,” a song whose highest note is a B♭5, and she would later go a half-step lower to F3 on the lowest notes of "The Last Thing on My Mind.” By comparison, "Chains" and "Timber, I'm Falling in Love" both require a vocal range of exactly one octave: from B3 (the note just below middle C) to B4 on the former, and from C♯4 to C♯5 on the latter. At first glance, this would suggest that the lower end of her range became more pronounced post-surgery with little to no negative impact on the upper range. Furthermore, this live performance of "Timber, I'm Falling in Love" -- which while undated, is clearly sometime after her surgery -- shows that the higher notes were still easily within her range: "Timber, I'm Falling in Love." And if you saw her sing "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive" with Chris Stapleton last year, you'd know she clearly hasn't lost a step with age.

 

Emotional range, however, is a bit more subjective. It's well known that I'm not a fan of belting divas, which were already a thing in country music in 1999. If you play a Patty Loveless song next to, for example, "Whatever You Say" by Martina McBride, then the latter is probably going to sound more dynamic thanks to her extended belting (to be fair, this is one of the few Martina McBride songs on which I can tolerate such an approach). But to me, the beauty of Patty Loveless is how she doesn't need volume to convey emotion. "Here I Am" and "How Can I Help You Say Goodbye" have softer deliveries befitting the songs, while she still has the muscle for something more upbeat like "Blame It on Your Heart" or "She Drew a Broken Heart,” and all are equally nuanced in her reads. There were several up-tempos in the 90s that were kneecapped by limp deliveries (Ricky Van Shelton's "Wild Man" comes to mind), but I guarantee you none of them were by Patty.

 

For comparison, listen to any Jo Dee Messina record. I've never been impressed with her voice, as she seems to sing everything in the exact same delivery, and she rode the "you go girl" shtick so far into the ground that I genuinely do not remember the three singles between "Bring On the Rain" (her best, both lyrically and vocally) and her embarrassing cover of Joe Diffie's "My Give a Damn's Busted.” To this day, I still get "I'm Alright" and "Bye, Bye" mixed up, and I also have zero memory of "Because You Love Me" (which therefore means it is the worst song by the usually reliable Kostas, whose name is on many a Loveless album). There's just too little vocally, instrumentally, or lyrically to make most of her songs stand out from each other, and I often find her delivery so impersonal that I wonder if some sort of voice synthesis program was used. And thus, "I don't like Jo Dee Messina" is my hot take for the day.

 

"[L]ess adventurousness and simply less spunk" is also hard to quantify. Yes, if you look at the ten songs on her MCA Greatest Hits, the only real ballads on it are "If My Heart Had Windows" and "Don't Toss Us Away"; everything else is mid-tempo or upbeat. She just didn't do a lot of ballads early on, although she did end her MCA tenure with the very Patsy Cline-esque "Can't Stop Myself from Loving You.” While she did start hitting with ballads on Epic, it's not like she gave up on up-tempo by a long shot. I'm sure you're all familiar with such upbeat hits of hers as "Blame It on Your Heart" or "I Try to Think About Elvis.” And she did throw a few curve balls here and there. Listen to the keyboard riff on "You Will,” the plot twist in the last verse of "Here I Am,” or her standing toe-to-toe with George Jones on "You Don't Seem to Miss Me.” Or hell, just the fact that "To Have You Back Again" is probably the only country song with the word "chameleon" in it.

 

"[I]t's harder to distinguish her from all the other women on country radio.” I never thought that at all, not even as a kid when I had far lesser understanding of artistry. While she didn't write her songs, her husband Emory Gordy Jr. produced nearly all of her albums, and the sound is pristine. There's no multi-tracking like Alan Jackson; no rock hooks like Shania; no Phil Collins snares and heavy reverb like early Toby Keith; and no blaring Dann Huff guitars. Sure, the heavy twang puts her in a similar league as Reba McEntire or Natalie Maines, but at the same time, Patty never chased trends or derived herself from other artists. She didn't do dance remixes. She didn't start doing overwrought pop ballads at the end of the '90s (a mistake even Reba made). or try to do a Shania Twain-style rocker. Every single song in her Epic catalog feels like something she wanted to make because it was her music.

 

"As for the songwriting, it's not just derivative but lazy.” Oh, really? You mean "blame it on your lyin', cheatin', cold, dead-beatin', two-timin', double-dealin', mean, mistreatin', lovin' heart" is lazy? A hook like "you can feel bad if it makes you feel better" or "holdin' onto nothin' but the wheel" is lazy? A song whose entire premise is mocking the man who's still carring a flame for you -- because you're still carrying a flame for him too -- is lazy? Yeah, I'm not seeing it. Now, around 1980-81 when it felt like every other song by a country woman had the word "cheatin'" in it? That was lazy.

 

Speaking of "Nothin' but the Wheel,” how the hell does that sound like Rosanne Cash? Her music cast a wide net too: the shiny pop crossover of "Seven Year Ache,” the old-school folk of "Tennessee Flat Top Box" (a personal favorite), the protest-tinged "What We Really Want,” the haunting "September When It Ends.”.. all different, all clearly Rosanne Cash, and none of them sounding even remotely like "Nothin' but the Wheel.” And how is a list song of any kind, "I Try to Think About Elvis" or otherwise, anything remotely close to Mary Chapin Carpenter? She never did list songs to my knowledge, and her up-tempos always had meat on their bones. Just look at "I Feel Lucky.” Finally, there's comparing "Blame It on Your Heart" to Highway 101's "Honky Tonk Heart.” Now, I love Highway 101. Paulette Carlson's tremolo-heavy voice over those tight harmonies, mixing California country-rock guitars in all the while? That stuff's aged like fine wine to me. "Honky Tonk Heart" is a peppy breakup shuffle with a couple unusual chord changes, meaning just on structure alone, it could hardly be different from the evenly-measured, unrelenting tongue-twister that is "blame it on your lyin', cheatin', cold, dead-beatin', two-timin', double-dealin', mean, mistreatin', lovin' heart.” (I just wanted to type that again to prove I could do it from memory.)

 

As someone with a bit of experience as a music critic, I know what it's like to have an unpopular opinion. So I'm not looking to trash Mark Robison here. This review's from 1999, and he probably doesn't agree with every word of it 24 years later (if he even remembers writing it at all). I was just flabbergasted by the tone of the review and felt a counterpoint to it would be a good match for my own brand of analytical wit.