Every #1 Country Single of the Eighties: Ronnie Milsap, “Inside”/”Carolina Dreams”

“Inside“

Written by Mike Reid

“Carolina Dreams”

Written by Kye Fleming, Dennis Morgan, and Marie Tomlinson

Ronnie Milsap

Radio & Records

#1 (1 week)

January 28, 1983

Billboard

#1 (1 week)

February 5, 1983

We’ve got another double-sided hit from Ronnie Milsap, and the whole is a bit more than the sum of its parts.

“Inside” is a decent composition written by Mike Reid, and it’s easy to imagine Reid singing it quite well. Strangely, Milsap falls a bit short of his usual standard here. He’s one of the genre’s strongest vocalists, but on “Inside,” he sounds like he’s imitating someone else, using an overly polite and slightly whiny yacht rock delivery. It’s not one of his better performances.

“Carolina Dreams” is quite a bit better, leaning into nostalgia for the middle east coast, where he left a love behind. He goes for an arrangement similar to “Smoky Mountain Rain.” It doesn’t break any new artistic ground for him, but it’s solid Milsap, with interesting character work and smart phrasing choices throughout.

Neither side of this 45 would rank among his best hits on its own, but “Dreams” comes considerably closer than “Inside.”

“Inside” gets a C.

“Carolina Dreams” gets a B.

Every No. 1 Single of the Eighties

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