“Timber, I’m Falling in Love”
Patty Loveless
Written by Kostas
Radio & Records
#1 (3 weeks)
July 14 – July 28, 1989
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
August 12, 1989
“I tell people I’m a combination of Linda Ronstadt, Loretta Lynn, and Ralph Stanley.”
That Patty Loveless quote opens the entry for this song in The Billboard Book of Number One Country Hits, which covers chart toppers from 1968 through 1989. I don’t know what the correlation is between an artist’s self-awareness and their greatness, but in the case of Patty Loveless, she captures the brilliance of her musical alchemy with that very self-aware take.
Loveless hails from Appalachian Kentucky, and her country and bluegrass roots run deep. She’s a coal miner’s daughter like her distant cousins Lynn and Crystal Gayle, and her early singing experiences came through the Wilburn Brothers, an act that discovered Loveless and her brother while they were still school age. After graduating high school, Loveless married the Wilburns’ drummer and moved to North Carolina, singing rock and pop in local venues before moving to Nashville to land a record deal.
Loveless’ timing was off at first. Her singles deal with MCA was converted to an albums deal on the strength of early reception to “I Did,” a stark country ballad that Loveless wrote herself. They pulled it from radio so they could record the album, but interest had waned by the time they reserviced the single a few months later. Her self-titled debut album didn’t produce any hits, but her second MCA record did. If My Heart Had Windows provided the breakthrough top ten title track for Loveless, as well as the top five Steve Earle-penned romp, “A Little Bit in Love.”
Loveless came into her own on her third album, Honky Tonk Angel, which produced five top five hits, including two No. 1 singles. “Timber, I’m Falling in Love” is her only eighties No. 1 hit, and it announces her arrival as a new traditionalist superstar. She fuses a pure country vocal with Ronstadt’s power, Lynn’s twang, and Stanley’s high-pitched wail, creating a progressive country sound that foreshadows her landmark work with Emory Gordy, Jr. in the nineties.
It’s deliriously catchy and euphorically goofy. It’s corny about love in the way that only country music at its most earnest can be. I’m not sure I could even take this song seriously from another artist on the scene at the time, but it’s perfection in Patty’s hands.
“Timber, I’m Falling in Love” gets an A.
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Oft-times it is hard to take an artist seriously when they make the kind of declaration that Patty made about herself; it could easily sound like Southern-fried chutzpah. But with this song, it is really Truth In Advertising. She has the traditionalism of her native Appalachia, while also embodying Linda’s West Coast rock approach as well, helping pave the way for what was to come from her and other soon-to-be-legendary women of country music between 1989 and 2003 (IMHO).
Welcoming a generational talent to the top of the charts is a special moment because their career, at least in terms of mainstream success, has arrived.
This song galloped along like no other at the time, more pure and genuine country fun.
It sort of predicts the drive and energy of what Marty Stuart would accomplish with “Hillbilly Rock” in 1990 while hewing closer to the hillbilly than the rock, but still acknowledging those influences in her own emerging sound.
As much as Loveless is celebrated as a traditionalist, there was always a pop streak, or sensibility, a mile-wide running through her musical holler, that Ronstadt influence she mentioned.
It is worth noting this hit also marks Kostas’ first #1 hit as a burgeoning Nashville songwriting dynamo.
Another reason for celebrating 1989 as one of country music’s very good years!
I’m usually pretty sensitive to country songs with an overly cornball lyrical hook and I was even as a boy, so it says a lot that it took many years for me to recognize how goofy this song was. Patty Loveless’s performance coupled with the arrangement was apparently intoxicating to the point of hypnosis because I was able to jam along with it and never feel guilty. And it wouldn’t be the only time Patty would be able to sell a cheesy song in a way that few others could. I agree that no other female artists at the time could make this song work, but give it five years and I’m pretty confident Martina McBride could have sold it too.
It wasn’t unusual for women country stars to have slow starts to the success, and it’s only with the benefit of history that we can sigh with relief that Nashville didn’t let this one slip away. Whether it be the feel-good uptempo vibes of a song like this one or the mournfulness of a heartbreaking ballad, Patty Loveless’s mountain wail was like none other the country music world has ever seen. Most rewardingly, she could seamlessly mold that mountain wail into a highly traditional country song or into the pop confections that were in such high demand when Nashville began chasing the youth market in the mid-90s. Her confidence and self-awareness are clear based on her description of her musical identity as a fusion between Ronstadt, Lynn, and Stanley.
It’s probably for the best that Patty didn’t find her career footing until 1989 because it positioned her for the boom years when production quality improved, ensuring that her work wouldn’t either get typecast or drowned out by an Urban Cowboy-era vibe that wouldn’t have been a sufficient vessel for her talent. Anyway, this was the opening salvo of the 90s Women of Country revolution, and a highly worthy one.
Grade: A
I think Patty’s MCA era is vastly underappreciated in relation to her tenure at Sony; the fact that this album best single was a Lone Justice cover and the next album’s best single was a Lucinda Williams cover says she was probably more progressive with her song selection than she was given credit during this time period. Even more frustrating that arguably her best records WEREN’T hitting the top while MCA was pushing tripe like the previous Number One to radio (from what was no question Reba’s worst MCA album not named Starting Over). I’m glad Epic made her a priority, but Tony Brown left money on the table with alot of Patty’s releases (that last MCA album was especially slept on).