“Ain’t She Somethin’ Else”
Conway Twitty
Written by Jerry Foster and Bill Rice
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
February 9, 1985
“Ain’t She Somethin’ Else” is so far below Conway Twitty’s normal standards that I spent the better part of an evening double checking the copyright information, making sure that I wasn’t listening to a late career re-record for a budget label compilation release.
Nothing about this works at all. The production is garish, the songwriting is slight, and I’m pretty sure Twitty himself is off key at multiple points of this record. It’s so bad that hearing Twitty on this made me flash back to Carly Pearce throwing Trisha Yearwood off when they sang “How Do I Live” together on the Opry, which remains the only time I’ve ever heard Trisha Yearwood sing poorly.
I honestly can’t believe this was even released, let alone that it went to No. 1 on a major chart.
Twitty produced this with his wife, Dee Henry, and they’d done some great work together before this. But hearing this remarkably poor effort, I can understand why they brought in additional producers moving forward.
Look, every legend has to have a low point. This one is Twitty’s, at least as far as his No. 1 singles are concerned.
Thankfully, Twitty still has several No. 1 singles on the way, including some that only topped the Radio & Records chart after he earned his last Billboard No. 1 single in 1986.
“Ain’t She Somethin’ Else” gets an F.
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I had to go back and listen to this. It really is a forgettable hit. Conway’s next #1 is one of my favorite ’80s country singles, and a personal favorite from his amazing catalog of hits.
Bill Rice, the co-writer on this, passed away last week (10-28) at his Florida home. I just read a snippet about him in Billboard. Some of his other credits include “I’m Not That Lonely Yet” for Reba, “I’ll Think of Something”, recorded by Hank Williams, Jr. and Mark Chesnutt, and “Lonely Too Long”, by Pattt Loveless. Most of Rice’s output was written with Jerry Foster. They made a great songwriting team. RIP, Bill Rice.
As a Twitty apologist, it sounds like he wants to run vocally here but is held back by the plinking and plonking of the almost not there instrumentation.
The song sounds like a rough demo. In so many of his previous hits, Twitty’s singing was consistently complemented by big production elements as he masterfully played with the songs’ dynamics.
This sounds like a walk through.
It is forgettable and not particularly compelling as is, but I don’t think it is as awful as the failing mark suggests.
That being said, I can hear Conway’s critics saying doesn’t this just sound like every other Twitty single?
I think this song, especially the chorus, could soar if the studio team took another crack it.