“Fallin’ Again”
Alabama
Written by Greg Fowler, Teddy Gentry, and Randy Owen
Radio & Records
#1 (2 weeks)
June 10 – June 17, 1988
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
July 9, 1988
Alabama’s final single before their first hiatus previews their path forward as a band.
It was a short hiatus, mind you, as they’d be back on the radio with a new producer and a new sound before the year was out. The previous two singles we covered from Just Us found the band trapped in their familiar themes and arrangements, making “Fallin’ Again” sound innovative and forward-looking by comparison.
And in a sense, it is. The band’s lyrics are more nostalgic, embracing their status as established veterans in the country music world. There is a new emphasis on clean and clear acoustic guitar chords, the kind that had powered recent breakthrough hits from Randy Travis, Steve Earle, and Foster & Lloyd. They sound current again for the first time since at least “She and I.”
The song is still too repetitive and the “fallin'” concept too underdeveloped for it to be a full return to form. But it has a pulse and a point of view, two things that couldn’t be said about most of the hits that immediately precede it.
“Fallin’ Again” gets a B.
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The high-quality roll we were on had to end sometime and it comes to a screeching halt here! I’ve had more positive reaction than negative to Alabama over the years, but the stretch of forgettable chart-toppers they coasted on since I started writing responses for beginning with 1987 singles really highlights how often they were on cruise control. I’ll give this song nominal credit for some decent guitar work that helps put the song on its feet a little more than the previous two snoozers, but the lyrics are so dreadfully bland and repetitive that they undermine the guitar work. It’s pretty rare to come across a song this lyrically lazy that made it to #1. This one should have been buried as an album cut and the fact that it ended up as a single makes me wonder how bland the rest of the record must have been. It always frustrates me when an act with career momentum is able to crowd out the top of the charts peddling mediocrity, and this one stands out to me as a prime example. Thankfully, a version of Alabama I like quite a bit better is around the corner.
Grade: D
Having hit rock bottom with their most recent previous hits, this single does have the stirrings of hope, of some new awareness of what it will take to fit in on country radio to match the dynamism and excitement increasingly heard on the hits by new artists.
The energy level is up – it does have a pulse – but it certainly does flounder lyrically. There is a strange ho-hum aspect to their take on the inevitability of falling in love yesterday, today, and tomorrow. They essentially take falling in love for granted.
Creatively, this feels like a sideways move.
The Alabama yo-yo is in the sleeper position, still spinning in place at the bottom of its string.