Search - T.G. Sheppard :: Perfect Strangers

A first duet for T G Sheppard on a great album

Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 05/21/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I had high hopes for Karen Brooks as a country singer in the early eighties but although she recorded some excellent albums around that time, her only significant success was the duet she recorded around that time with T G Sheppard (Faking love), which made number one on the country charts and is one of the outstanding tracks here. It also provided one of its co-writers, Matraca Berg, with one of her earliest successes as a songwriter. Like Karen, Matraca never had much success as a singer but at least Matraca succeeded as a songwriter - phenomenally so.



Actually my favorite track here is War is hell on the home front too, the other country number one hit to come from the album. It is about a meeting with a woman who is feeling lonely while her man is at war and unable to comfort her. Very sensitively written and superbly performed, this is among T G's best-ever songs. Note quite my favorite (that would be Do you wanna go to heaven), but it's close.



Other songs of particular interest are Close brush with life (a Larry Gatlin song), Spare hearts (co-written by Chris Waters, who later wrote many songs for Holly Dunn), Reno and me (later covered by Waylon Jennings on his Eagle album and by Jon Randall on his debut album) and The sun's gonna shine on me (on which T G gets co-writing credit). However, my favorite among the non-singles is A pretty diamond ring, a song about a broken relationship.



Three other great songs (Back in your arms, Where did we go right?, Gonna keep on trying) complete yet another excellent album by T G Sheppard."