“Let Me Tell You About Love”
The Judds
Written by Paul Kennerley, Brent Maher, and Carl Perkins
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
September 8, 1989
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
September 30, 1989
A collaboration between the Judds and Carl Perkins should be anything but rote, yet “Let Me Tell You About Love” comes pretty close to being a genre exercise.
That’s primarily due to the limitations being placed on Wynonna by this point of the Judds saga. She could rock and she could boogie, as long as she kept it within the parameters of the mom and girl next door image and sound that had been established. Basically, she could be the coolest gal at the sock hop, and that’s about it.
It’s still a great genre exercise, of course, with a fifties rockabilly meets eighties country groove that the Judds could do in their sleep by this point. Wynonna does her damndest with the lyric too, which makes a game attempt at a love throughout history epic like “Fever” but is more reminiscent of the theme song to Maude.
It’s a flaccid end to the Judds run at the top, but thankfully, there is a bumper crop of country classics on the way from Wynonna in the nineties.
“Let Me Tell You About Love” gets a B.
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I never was a big fan of the Judds, but I loved much Of Wy’s solo output. This is a pleasant ditty, but nothing more than that. As you noted “thankfully, there is a bumper crop of country classics on the way from Wynonna in the nineties” plus even more after the 90s were over.
First thing’s first, I had to check out the theme song of “Maude”. I’m as big of an aficionado of 80s-era TV theme songs as you’ll find, but “Maude” was before my time. The comparison to this Judds entry is by no means without salience.
I liked the song better than you but I don’t disagree that they could have ratcheted up the energy a notch or two and nobody would have held it against them. The lyrics were clever and the rockabilly groove addictive. It worked far better than the half-assed, pretentiously bluesy singles that preceded it, but Wynonna was by now overdue to spread her wings and fly. I always preferred my Judds music soft and traditional, but I acknowledge that Wynonna had much more to offer and the expiration date on her mother-daughter variety show gig had been reached. She’d have undoubtedly done an appropriately aggressive version of this song as a soloist, something more along the lines of “Girls with Guitars”.
Grade: B+