“Crazy Over You”
Foster and Lloyd
Written by Radney Foster and Bill Lloyd
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
September 18, 1987
Foster and Lloyd leveraged a hit as a songwriting team hop aboard the rockabilly revival train.
Radney Foster and Bill Lloyd were accomplished songwriters and aspiring artists when they teamed up as a duo, earning a recording contract in the wake of co-writing the Sweethearts of the Rodeo hit, “Since I Found You.”
Barreling through the door busted open by Dwight Yoakam one year earlier, they embraced a twanged-up rockabilly sound on their infectious and enduring debut single, “Crazy Over You,” which showcases their sharp songwriting skills and Foster’s confident lead vocal abilities.
The creative tension between the two stylists really delivers, as Lloyd’s affection for pure pop hooks melds with Foster’s flavor of Texas-bred traditional country. You can hear the early seeds of Americana here, which would eventually break down so many of the strong walls between genres that existed back in their day. Jason Isbell topping the rock and charts with the same album can be traced back to this brief era of mainstream country music.
That influence has endured even better than this delectable slice of rockin’ country. Their run on the radio was brief – a couple more top ten hits and they were gone – but their impact remains.
Check out all three of the albums from their first run and their reunion project from a few years ago, as well as their solo efforts. All of their recordings, together and apart, are essential listening.
“Crazy Over You” gets an A.
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Bill Lloyd & Radney Foster’s “Crazy Over You” is a timeless masterpiece.
After they split up, I found myself becoming a big Radney Foster fan with little interest in Bill Lloyd’s subsequent career. This song only reached #4 on Billboard so I was surprised to see it show up here. A subsequent song, “Texas in 1880” received a lot of airplay in Central Florida (top three on local charts) so that is the song I remember best from this duo. This is a very good song – a B+ or A-
I was also surprised to see this song made to #1 on Radio and Records. It gives me hope that some other songs from the late 80s that missed the penthouse on Billboard will still show up on this feature because of R & R. I’m curious where the R & R chart histories are even available online (or anywhere) as I’ve never run into them. Anyway, Foster and Lloyd certainly came out of the starting gate with all cylinders firing here, with Foster’s vocals and the guitar work standing out on this track. I must confess that I’m not well enough versed in musical styles to notice anything particularly revolutionary about Foster and Lloyd’s sound even though they’re frequently credited as being groundbreaking. I can identify “the Bakersfield sound” prominent in Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam music, but I don’t necessarily notice that influence here.
It was Foster and Lloyd’s follow-up hit (“A Sure Thing”) that was easily my favorite of theirs, mixing the smooth delivery of the Urban Cowboy era with a more traditionally country arrangement better than just about any other song of the late 80s for my taste. It surprises me it didn’t even crack the top-5. It also surprises me that the duo flamed out as quickly as they did and that they didn’t even have as many hits as The O’Kanes. And while none of the four members of these two duos had striking success in their solo careers in the 90s (at least on radio), Radney Foster certainly had the most success of the four, and deservedly so. As for Lloyd, I knew he was in The Sky Kings but can’t remember what else he did in the decade to come. Buffalo Club?
Grade: B+
Check out worldradiohistory.com for archived issues of R&R, Billboard, and dozens of other music industry publications from around the world! I pieced the R&R chart histories together issue by issue.
This made me go back on a Foster & Lloyd kick. They had a lot of good songs and were very unique. I still think someone from the 2000’s should’ve covered “You Can Come Cryin to Me” and made it a hit as it sounds very modern and really cool. “Faster & Louder” is a lot of fun. But glad to see if Radney get some commercial success even if it was short lived. He has one of the greatest song hooks that I can’t believe nobody wrote until him in “Everybody Get’s the Blues but I know how to keep em”.
This single was a shot across country music’s bow.
The field had suddenly opened up for what country music could sound like and look like.
I remember being intimidated and uncertain about the rawness and energy of this performance.
It was challenging and unsettling.
Yet,it was also just as inviting and intriguing.
Foster & Lloyd was in-your-face country music.
Saddle up!