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Post by Partridge on Feb 28, 2023 22:01:30 GMT -5
I already had this article/review posted on the website, but it was text only. That was posted in the early days of the website. Now I prefer to show, if possible, the article as it was originally presented. I've purchased another Newsweek on ebay that has a Pirates of Penzance Canciones article I had not hitherto seen.
This is from Newsweek, March 27, 1995 issue:
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Post by erik on Feb 28, 2023 23:07:10 GMT -5
I guess I would disagree to an extent with Ms. Schoemer's review of both Linda and Trisha, in the context that it was Trisha exclusively who was supposedly "crossing over" from country to pop--but that's not a criticism of Trisha...or at least I don't think it is. Trisha has never been shy about considering Linda, for all intents and purposes, her spiritual role model, so no one can say that they were caught off-guard by her occasional pitches onto the pop side of the fence. I don't think it was pandering on Trisha's part, just as I don't think the overtly country sound of Feels Like Home was trying to pander to the 1990's country audience.
And lest we forget, Trisha would cover Linda's great songwriting gem "Try Me Again" on her 2000 release Real Live Woman to seal the deal.
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Post by Partridge on Mar 4, 2023 0:31:45 GMT -5
This writer says that Linda has "gone country" with this album, and I agree. The album is about 80% country. Yet it failed to appear on the country chart, not from lack of sales but because the record company did not choose to classify it as country. Had they not made this faux pas, the album would have debuted on the country chart at #4 and given it a lot more visibility.
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Post by RobGNYC on Mar 4, 2023 0:54:58 GMT -5
Tony—how do you know that it would have debuted at #4?
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Post by Partridge on Mar 4, 2023 1:07:14 GMT -5
I looked at the overall Top 200 chart and checked off the albums that were country Top 5. Feels Like Home fell between the #3 and #4 country albums, so it would have taken the #4 slot if classified as country.
It got lost as a pop album, but it was a contender as a country album.
A friend of mine said it was a shame the album got lost and was not as successful as Emmylou's Wrecking Ball. I pointed out to him that Wrecking Ball got a lot of press, but Feels Like Home charted 20 points higher and stayed on the chart twice as long. Perception vs. reality.
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Post by erik on Mar 4, 2023 18:28:18 GMT -5
Quote by Partridge:
This presumes that the country audience would have gone out and brought that album in droves. Given that the track serviced from the album to country radio, "Walk On", stalled at #61 on the Billboard country singles/tracks chart, I am, to say the least, dubious about that.
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Post by Partridge on Mar 4, 2023 20:54:21 GMT -5
The reason, in my opinion, that the track stalled is because it received very little airplay. If the album had placed in the Top 5, more stations would have played that single.
Years before, Living in the USA charted high on the country album chart, and it was only 15% country. And I doubt the majority of buyers were diehard country fans.
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Post by erik on Mar 5, 2023 19:03:34 GMT -5
Quote by Partridge:
Again, this assumes that the country audience of the 1990's would have gone out and brought Feels Like Home in droves, just as the country audiences of the 1970's made Living In The USA such a big crossover smash, had it been marketed as a Country Album. The problem with that, however. is that the country music landscape of the 1990's was much different from where it had been twenty years earlier, and so too were the young fans who were powering their era's heroes, like Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Martina McBride, and even Trisha. To the extent that the fans of the 1990's country music boom knew Linda at all, they probably only knew her for the Aaron Neville duets, the Nelson Riddle albums, and the Mexican albums, and not Heart Like A Wheel or even Trio I, unless those young fans' parents exposed them to those albums.
Much as I might want to believe Feels Like Home would have been a bigger hit had it been marketed as a Country album, I just don't think it would have happened that way.
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