“Fallin’ For You For Years”
Conway Twitty
Written by Mike Reid and Troy Seals
Radio & Records
#1 (2 weeks)
December 19 – December 26, 1986
While most of his contemporaries were being dropped from major labels and heading to independent startups, Conway Twitty was being courted by MCA Nashville to return to their roster, following his successful stint at Warner Bros.
Twitty went out on top with his final WB single. “Fallin’ For You For Years” is a throwback to the pop country that was in vogue a few years earlier. Thankfully, it borrows from the sophisticated Rodney Crowell-producing-Rosanne Cash template, where a tasteful backing track allows both the lyric and the singer a chance to shine.
Twitty is in fine vocal form here, still demonstrating that a love song never had a better friend than the High Priest of Country Music. The song has the typical emotional complexity of a Twitty track, where there is tension between how a love is externally perceived and how it’s being internally felt by its participants.
In this case, a long married couple looks like a pair of dirty little cheaters to the onlookers around them. How on earth could there still be such a fire between two people who’d been together for so long?
Twitty does this kind of song so well, and you can hear his influence on the material that a descendant like Blake Shelton has recorded over the years. The track needed slightly tighter production, as there was no need for this to have a running time approaching five minutes. But his upcoming reunion with MCA will also get Twitty back in the recording booth with Jimmy Bowen, so yet another Conway renaissance awaits.
“Fallin’ For You For Years” gets a B+.
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Even with the seismic changes happening within the industry, Conway Twitty continues to matter on the country charts.
And it is well worth noting Mike Reid had himself a decade as a songwriter.
Conway has some big – almost signature – singles to come yet.
The vocal intensity of his late ’80s’ output is inspiring for an artist who has been recording since the late 1950s.
Conway!