“A Lady Like You”
Glen Campbell
Written by Keith Stegall and Jim Weatherly
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
February 15, 1985
Glen Campbell’s mid-seventies comeback had peaked with “Southern Nights,” which topped the country and pop charts in 1977.
While he never had another major pop hit again, he remained a consistent presence on the country chart, with a handful of top ten and top twenty singles in the late seventies and early eighties.
He revived his fortunes with Letter to Home, which launched with a top ten cover of “Faithless Love” and was followed by his final single to top the country chart.
Nothing about “A Lady Like You” screams “comeback record.” It’s a polite and respectfully delivered ballad celebrating a woman who is way out of the league of the man that she married.
Campbell’s in fine voice, but the production is fairly listless. It would benefit from some of Campbell’s guitar playing, if nothing else. There’s nothing distinctively Glen Campbell about the arrangement. He sounds like he’s doing a guest spot on a European talk show, and making due with the tepid stylings of the house band.
Campbell had five more top ten hits through 1989, then faded off of the radio along with nearly all the veteran acts of the seventies and eighties. He became a Branson mainstay for many years, running his own theater, and he continued to record. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005.
In the final decade of his life, as he struggled with Alzheimer’s, he produced some powerful music, with “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” returning him to the top thirty of the country chart. The track reunited him with the his legendary fellow Wrecking Crew studio musicians, and it won the Grammy for Best Country Song.
Campbell passed away in 2017 at the age of 81.
“A Lady Like You” gets a B-.
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I remember this feeling so comfortable and relaxed at the time. Sure the whole song sleeps softly throughout, but it feels confident and cozy.
I felt the same way about his later singles “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” and “Still Within the Sound of My Voice.”
It was a blessing to have older artists like Campbell still charting and being played on the radio.
There time was quickly coming to an end.