“(I’d Choose) You Again”
The Forester Sisters
Written by Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
October 3, 1987
The Forester Sisters return to No. 1 for a final time, and they do it with their best single up until that point.
Their sweet harmonies, delivered so gently, fit hand in glove with the anniversary sentiment of the lyric. It’s anything but sappy. The protagonist is acknowledging all of the mistakes that she’s made and the hardships she’s faced with her partner, and making it clear that there’s only one thing she would do again if given the chance to start all over.
I’ll go on the record and say that this is even better than Alan Jackson’s “I’d Love You All Over Again,” which was written while this song was still getting recurrent airplay, and perhaps just a notch or two below the Rodney Crowell hit that’s on the way.
This hit came right in the middle of the fourteen consecutive top ten hits that the Forester Sisters earned with their first fourteen singles. But the nineties were a harsh mistress for acts that broke out during this era. Their next two singles peaked below the top sixty and the one after that didn’t even chart.
They enjoyed a brief comeback with the hilarious “Men,” which became their fifteenth and final top ten hit. They never returned to the top forty, and after a handful of spiritual recordings, they retired, and they haven’t released any new music since 2002. They reunite occasionally, including performing at their induction into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2013. For Designing Women fans, a particularly cool factoid is that two of the sisters became interior designers, while the other two became educators.
But for a few years there, the Forester Sisters were among the most consistent hitmakers in country music. If you want to fully understand their appeal, start with this hit.
“(I’d Choose) You Again” gets an A.
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I completely agree that this is the best hit the Forester Sisters ever put out. It’s in an entirely different league than their earlier or future hits. The harmonies are pitch-perfect and the lyrics land with both sweetness and sincerity. I wasn’t at all surprised to see Paul Overstreet as one of the songwriters as this was right in his wheelhouse. I laughed at the “Designing Women” reference as that album cover could have been transposed with a late 80s “DW” promotional shot and people would have to look close to tell the difference.
Grade: A-
…almost beats hot apple pie with vanilla ice cream.
Timing is everything.
The Forester Sisters join the ranks of ’80s stars who will receive raw deals as their reward for finding their creative stride at apparently the wrong time just as Nashville pivots towards a young roster of stars and an even younger fan base.
As deserving and dynamic as the emerging young artists were, it doesn’t follow that the older stars of the late ’80s were deficient or less than in any way. Isn’t this feature evidence of that?
Conway Twitty, The Oak Ridge Boy’s, Eddy Raven, The Forester Sisters, Crystal Gayle, Holly Dunn, and Judy Rodman immediately come to mind as artists who were still more than capable of keeping pace and contact with the country audience and fan base.
The flip to ’90s country success is not as meritocratic a process as it is often presented.
This song, however, justly deserves every accolade it has received here.
It is beautiful in both it’s wise lyrics and mature performance for an older audience who had experienced something more than just young love and all the complex emotions that come with age.
This feature brought into focus how pioneering The Forester Sisters were and the impact their chart success no doubt had on many of the future female country stars about to take flight.