“Do You Love as Good as You Look”
The Bellamy Brothers
Written by Charlie Black, Rory Bourke, and Jerry Gillespie
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
March 6, 1981
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
March 7, 1981
The Bellamy Brothers don’t get enough credit for how much their sound lay the groundwork for the success of Alabama.
One could be forgiven for thinking that “Do You Love as Good as You Look” was an Alabama record, though the title is certainly a Bellamy Brothers signature: the single entendre.
There are no surprises here. “Do You Love as Good as You Look” really is the pickup line the title indicates, and the song requires us to suffer along until the end because, well, it’s not a good enough pickup line to get the gal to go home with you after the first chorus. At least they don’t sound like serial killers on this, which is more than I can say about their next single.
They had already preceded this with “Lovers Live Longer,” the top five lead-off single from Sons of the Sun. They followed “Look” with a series of non-LP singles that would later surface on compilations: the (horrifying) top fifteen “They Could Put Me in Jail,” the top ten “You’re My Favorite Star,” and the holiday single “It’s So Close to Christmas (and I’m So Far from Home).”
We’ll see the brothers again in 1982.
“Do You Love as Good as You Look” gets a C.
Every No. 1 Single of the Eighties
Previous: Willie Nelson, “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” |
I feel like a Bellamy Brothers apologist. I think their work is best listened to as a whole, something like a greatest hits package. They certainly worked a familiar narrow furrow of ground but they always sounded like they were having fun doing it. It’s probably splitting hairs, but their brand of sleaze never sounded as aggressive or possessive as T.G. Sheppard’s songs of conquest. It’s as if the Bellamy Brothers didn’t even believe their awful pick-up lines themselves.
I can more easily trace their influence to the music of Kenny Chesney, Jake Owen, and the Zac Brown Band than I can establish how Sheppard’s output reached beyond the outhouse.
I will try to better explain their appeal come their next chart topper.