“She’s Too Good to Be True”
Exile
Written by Sonny LeMaire and J.P. Pennington
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
August 21, 1987
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
September 5, 1987
In Exile’s defense, the Hang On to Your Heart album was released in 1985, and anything representative of the pop-flavored country of that year was going to sound jarring after 1986 happened in between.
But even for 1985, this one’s a tough sell. “She’s Too Good to Be True” is an excruciating ballad about a couple getting it on. It seems heavily influenced by Kenny Rogers’ “She Believes in Me,” but in that song, Rogers was celebrating his partner’s commitment to his dreams, not her talents in bed.
The lyrics are somehow both voyeuristic and trite, and I’m not a fan of the awkward rhyming, either:
“She’s Too Good to Be True” gets a D.
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What blows, is this song.
Exile’s limitations as a band are so easily exposed.
Somehow this performance simultaneously fails to adequately tip its hat to Charlie Rich’s magisterial “Behind Closed Doors” nor adequately predict the intensity and sincerity of something like John Berry’s “Your Love Amazes Me.”
Or basically any number of similarly themed songs in between.
It just feels stuck in its own well-intended saccharine sentimentality and sensuality, like a pot left to boil but someone forgot to turn on the burner.
You can’t boil anything with room temperature water, penne or passion.
Are the bodies of bad country performances going to start stacking up in ways we did not see in the years preceding 1986?
I’d been vaguely aware of this song since the 80s but honestly had no idea it was an Exile song. I’m not quite registering the intensity of the loathing for it here. Just seems like the kissing cousin to “Morning Desire” to me. It’s nothing profound but the chorus is pleasing enough to my ears.
Grade: B-
I’d been vaguely aware of this song since the 80s but honestly had no idea it was an Exile song. I’m not quite registering the intensity of the loathing for it here. Just seems like the kissing cousin to “Morning Desire” to me. It’s nothing profound but the chorus is pleasing enough to my ears.
Grade: B-
A rather generic song from a rather generic band – like most Exile songs, I don’t hate, I don’t love it, and the song would not get me to change stations when it played – I’d give it a “C”