Borderline is the name of the 1987 Conway Twitty album that was also known as his comeback album for MCA Records, following his four year run with the Warner Brothers company. This particular album featured a whole assortment of country songs designed to go hand in hand with the sound of country music at the time. Conway, more than any other artist of his generation, was always recording songs that were modern...he rarely recorded songs that sounded as if they were written in the past. This isn't to say that he never recorded his fair share of traditional sounding country music because he did...but for the most part, a lot of the songs that became singles all carried the contemporary country sound.
This album was unique in that the title track, "Borderline", was never issued as a single. He had previously issued albums in the past whose title's were not issued as singles such as quite a few of his Warner Brothers releases, but pretty much it's an unwritten rule that albums are named either for the lead-off single or a song that'll eventually become a single at radio. Anyway, this 10-song collection was a perfect comeback to MCA...the first single from the album, the bouncy "Julia", was a major hit single during mid 1987. It's highlighted by the twinkling piano accompaniment. The song became his fifty-third #1 hit.
"Lonely Town", not a single, is a great song...and if one listens to it, you would wonder why it was never issued as a single. "I Want To Know You Before We Make Love" was the album's second single and it is the most dramatic...with a fascinating climax. It, too, was a monster hit in late 1987. "Borderline", the title track, is a bouncy dance-friendly song...followed by the dramatic "Not Enough Love To Go 'Round". The last five songs feature more mid-tempo material than straight ballads. "Snake Boots" features a high-octane performance complete with loud, rock-like instrumentation. "I'm For Awhile" is a song about loyalty while "Fifteen To Forty-Three" is a song about looking back into one's history. "Everybody Needs a Hero", much like "Snake Boots", is an up-tempo rocker song. The album closes with a poignant ballad, "That's My Job", which has a running time of 4:51 by most counts. It's just a tad shy of being five minutes long...incredible running time for a country song since the standard country song was 3 and a half minutes or shorter, very few ran longer than 3 minutes. The song was released as a single in late 1987 and amazingly it became a Top-10 hit in early 1988...in spite of it's length. It became one of his most-requested songs, too. It's the story of a father and son and how the son moves away to start his own life but consistently asks his father's advice and help along the way.
That's me and my cassette copy of Borderline. As I found out it is a very rare album...by that I mean it's out of print. I lucked out and found a cassette copy that appeared at a local record store one day several years ago and I grabbed it. These are clickable thumbnail images...you can click them to get a bigger image.
This is a little bit more rare...this is a double collection...featuring one album on each side of the cassette. MCA released these sort of collections in the early 1980's...this one came along in 1983...it features the Heart and Soul and Rest Your Love On Me albums on one cassette...
My grandfather bought a Conway Twitty cassette in the late 1980's...at the time I didn't know how rare and obscure the collection was becoming but now I know how quickly it went out of print...so here I am with my Chasin' Rainbows cassette. Conway released this in 1985 and I wrote a blog entry about the album already. I have the vinyl album, too, along with the cassette that my grandfather let me have.
I have a lot of Conway's cassette's and vinyl albums and here's one more...the cassette copy of his 1983 album Lost in the Feeling.
No comments:
Post a Comment