“Lynda”
Steve Wariner
Written by Bill LaBounty and Pat McLaughlin
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
October 30, 1987
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
November 28, 1987
The only pre-Arista Steve Wariner chorus that I know by heart is “Lynda.”
It’s just deliriously catchy, and Wariner delivers the hook with the right balance of dignity and desperation. It’s hard to imagine Lynda resisting his calls to give him a chance and fall in love.
Unless she also listens to the verses, and can’t get past this remarkably awkward game:
Keep the machinery runningIf it ever gets out of handYou can be my Wonder WomanI’ll just be your Spider Man
I went into this review fully expecting to give this one top marks, but Jesus wept, that’s a bad verse. The chorus is an easy A, though, and it is enough to bump this one up overall.
“Lynda” gets a B.
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Completely agree. The chorus is the only part that is memorable about the song and hasn’t aged that particularity well. I kind of agree with assessment that Steve Wariner is the king of forgotten hits. You look up his wiki and you think that he would have been a hall of famer with all the hits he acquired during his run. Problem is that not a lot of them were all that memorable. He is a very good singer and guitar player but probably got overlooked due to Vince Gill having similiar singing styles and musicianship but Vince’s songs have aged much better.
I remember hearing this song not too long ago, and I completely remembered the chorus, but that Spider Man verse just threw me off too.
Maybe the verse in question would have been better received if Steve had gone with: You can be my Louisiana woman; I’ll just be your Mississippi man. Yes/no?
Before Tyler’s comment, I’d never really did a mental deep dive into the respective bodies of works of Steve Wariner and Vince Gill. There were indeed plenty of similarities. Both had long careers that at times transcended Nashville (Steve Wariner sang the theme song for the top-10-rated sitcom “Who’s the Boss?”). Both were top-shelf guitarists. Both had below-average vocal range for artists who managed this level of success. And at least for me, both ran the gamut from excellent to mediocre to underwhelming in their material. Hell, Vince even has his own hit directly adjacent to “Lynda” in “Liza Jane”.
And both songs feel a little lazy in retrospect, driven entirely by the guitar hook. They’re both fine, as I always welcomed it when Gill and Wariner kicked up the tempo from their typical laconic vibe, but if you move past the catchy chorus, there’s not a lot there. Particularly as a follow-up to “The Weekend”, one of my favorite songs of 1987, “Lynda” seems like pretty thin gruel. Give Wariner props though as I think 1987 was a career year for him.
Grade: B-
Just making sure you know the Wonder Woman lyric is a reference to Lynda Carter, who inspired the song’s title. It’s odd, yes… but that’s the reason.
The real offence of the verse in question is the crossing of comic universe lines by trying to partner a DC icon with Marvel’s most popular superhero.
No amount of great guitar playing, sweet singing, or melodic energy can square that circle, Mr. Nice Guy.
Obviously, the songwriters should have stayed in the DC stable of superheroes…