“We Believe in Happy Endings”
Earl Thomas Conley with Emmylou Harris
Written by Bob McDill
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
September 2, 1988
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
October 1, 1988
Emmylou Harris earns her final No. 1 country single with “We Believe in Happy Endings,” a revival of a Johnny Rodriguez hit that’s repurposed as a duet with Earl Thomas Conley.
It’s one of those duets that is held back by the voices not blending well together. Harris is an all star harmony vocalist, but she isn’t a good fit for Conley’s lead vocal style. They both sound fantastic when they’re singing alone, so it’s really disappointing that they don’t sound great as a duo.
It’s a beautiful song that works better as a solo record, but I’m glad that the duet added to the number one tallies of both Conley and Harris, both of whom were nearing the ends of their impressive runs at country radio.
“We Believe in Happy Endings” gets a B.
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I can see the not blending part, but apart they sound nice, its a pleasant record
My feelings on this track are similar. I don’t think it’d have been among my favorites in either Earl or Emmylou’s catalog even if it was recorded as a solo, but it’s a decent track. Unfortunately, their voices don’t blend together well, as is the case in too many tracks that have been marketed as duets that should have been solo efforts.
Grade: B-
Sometimes it happens that two vocalists who sound dynamic on their own disappointingly don’t necessarily create sparks together (e.g. George Jones and Merle Haggard on “Yesterday’s Wine”). It’s not that either one of them are bad singers by any means, it’s just that there seems to be something missing.
It just may be that Emmy’s best non-solo work just may have come with other women, to wit Dolly and Linda.
That’s a bold claim, considering she sang with Gram Parsons.
And I agree with you!
Yes. she was absolutely great with Gram vocally, no question about it. She had to be, of course, since Gram was usually more loaded (pharmaceutically speaking) than a two-dollar pistol.
And lest this factoid fall into an unrecoverable rabbit hole, it was Gram’s idea to pair Emmylou with Linda as the harmony vocalists on his valedictory song “In My Hour Of Darkness”.
I was never a big fan of Emmylou Harris, but this isa great song!
I adore this song. It is just so damn pretty, across the board. Rather than downplay the effectiveness of the chorus harmonies, I think they provide a springboard for each vocalist to absolutely take off and shine on their own on the verses.
Where we first hear songs, or what we associate with hearing them, has as much claim to their stickiness, or significance, as any intrinsic musicality.
I will forever associate this song with a cabin on Shell Lake in Wisconsin. It was being played in heavy rotation on whatever the country radio station there was while I vacationed at a family friend’s lake home with my family.
More specifically, there was a bedroom loft, up a wooden ladder, pasted with images of NFL stars torn from Sports Illustrated magazines.
Although the release dates don’t align, I also link hearing this song with my sister endlessly playing her cassette copy of The Pet Shop boys album with the “West End Boys” single.
That physical and mental space was as cool as this song was pretty to 14 year-old me.
Somehow all of these disparate memories and associations hang together perfectly in my mind around this performance.