Tanya Tucker

One Liner: She's a classic country star, but I don't recognize much of this.

Wikipedia Genre: Country, outlaw country, country rock

Home:  Nashville (or maybe Malibu, CA now, but born in Texas!)

Poster Position: LARGE Type 

Saturday.

Thoughts:  So, Tucker was supposed to come to ACL in 2021, but ended up needing emergency surgery and had to back out of the Fest.  So, I'm just using my same review here that I created for her back then.  She's got one new single, that kind of sounds like a show tune, so I'll just stick with the discussion below.

You know what is fascinating?  When I hear the name Tanya Tucker, I'm immediately like "yeah, okay, sure.  Tanya Tucker.  Classic star for sure.  She's like Reba or, uh, like, uh, Wynona?  Right?"  And then if I try to name a single song that the woman sings, my brain looks like a goldfish struggling for air after it just jumped out of the fishbowl.  I have absolutely heard her name for years, but have I ever heard a song she sings?

Here's the deal though, until college, about as far into country as I ever strayed was Willie, Robert Earl, and Jerry Jeff.  And in college I pretty much just added George Strait, Pat Green, Ray Wylie, David Allan Coe, and a few random tracks from pop-country weirdos like Brooks & Dunn.  Oh, and I loved Alison Krauss because of camp.  But the deep cut world of real country that is depicted here?  I never waded that deep.  I dabbled in the Texas stuff and the outlaw stuff, and just enough to keep me relevant when trying to dance at the one bar in my tiny college town, but knowing what Travis Tritt or Tanya Tucker sang was way outside of my lane.  It was way later when I dug deeper and learned about the goods available with folks like Don Williams, Chris LeDoux, or Waylon Jennings.  And accepted that Garth Brooks and Clint Black and Dolly Parton were actually fun.  But Tucker never came onto my radar before right this minute.

Her most popular song - "Delta Dawn" - doesn't even sound like country music.  Sounds more like something Janis Joplin would have sung in the 60's.  I've certainly never heard it before now.  Then the second-most popular track - "Two Sparrows in a Hurricane" - sounds like some easy listening-ass shit.  I have literally never heard either of these songs.  Oh, I've heard "Texas (When I Die)," but I don't think I knew it was her singing it.  4.3 million streams.

Shooting up those longhorns!  Also, her voice is so rough and rugged in comparison to her look.  Look at those waiters walking through the crowd with mugs of beer on a tray!  Awesome.  I'd pay at least a nickel to have that happen at ACL while me and a bunch of cool kids clapped along to this song for 5 minutes.  Her dancing is freaking cracking me up.  She looks very uncomfortable trying to move, like a straight-up mom trying to dance along with the newest dance craze.  That video is amazing.

Oh wait, I've heard "Strong Enough to Bend" before.  That's a good tune.

Digging into her history now, and that first hit with "Delta Dawn" came when she was freaking 13 years old, in 1972.  So no wonder it doesn't ring a bell, I wasn't even alive.  But I have to say, it's pretty amazing to listen to that song right now and imagine it being sung by a child.  I never would have suspected.  Most streamed at 26.1 million listens.

She was born in Seminole, Texas, which is the county seat of Gaines County, way out in the western panhandle up against New Mexico.  But she then moved all about the west and lived in Nashville after becoming famous, so she's "from" all over.  Wikipedia also says she hooked up with Merle Haggard, Don Johnson, and Andy Gibb, so she's into all sorts of dudes.  She performed the half time of Super Bowl 28!  That's pretty crazy, that was in 1994!  I probably watched that Super Bowl - Cowboys over Bills.

Sounds like she was highly popular back in the 70's, but then fell off the radar a little in the late 70's and early 80's.  In 1988, her family got her into Betty Ford and she got some things straightened out.  By the late 1980's, she was back into the Top 40 with a bunch of songs I don't know, but also "Strong Enough to Bend."  1.4 million streams.  She is apparently not much of a streaming artist!

Freaking amazing that the top video on YouTube of that song is some bootleg ass version recorded onto VHS from CMT and then uploaded.  Really?  We can't get the actual video uploaded?  Why does the world work like that sometimes?  But, that is an enjoyable song.

"Love Me Like You Used To" is pretty great.  Some classic country gold right there.  "Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone)" is one I recognize, but only because that is by David Allan Coe and has also been covered by Willie and Johnny Cash.  "It's a Little Too Late (to do the Right Thing Now)" also sounds familiar.  She covers/mashes "I'm on Fire" and "Ring of Fire" in the same song on a live album and it's pretty great.  "San Antonio Stroll" is entirely new to me, but I dig it.  She definitely sounds like a child here.  More footage from that sweet ass concert!

Wait, that intro sounded like the intro to Austin City Limits?  Weird.  Anyway, I dig that oompah ass backbeat going on there, and now I'm planning to annoy my family to death the next time we go walking in San Antonio by loudly singing this song over and over.

She's got some other Texas-centric tunes to make sure to cash in on this whole thing - "The Pecos Promenade" is one of those that just name-checks a bunch of locations in Texas.  I'm expecting that she does this for big effect at a show to get the Amarillo nerds to try to out-holler the dorks from Corpus.

A good bit of this sounds more like easy listening than anything else.  "Soon" just came on as I was writing the above, and it made me think that I don't love alot of this music.  A good bit of it is enjoyable, classic country stuff.  But then the schmaltz kicks in and I'm turned off.  Also in that zone is the breathy ass "Your Love Amazes Me."  Blech.  Like, "Rainbow Rider" has some of the cool pieces of "Amarillo by Morning" or "Hooked on an Eight Second Ride," about being a real-deal cowboy chasing his dreams, but then its like also super lame at the same time.  [as an aside, Rainbow Rider is also the name of a public transit system in part of Minnesota.  Which is very funny and weird.  The term is also, per Urban Dictionary, slang for a guy who hooks up with a dude but maintains he is straight.]

Twenty Five total albums, spread out over a million years.  The new one (While I'm Livin') is actually really pretty good, even if her voice is worn in a way it didn't used to be.  She covers one of the Highwomen covers, called "Wheels of Laredo," and opens it up in a really nice way.  I think the Highwomen might be the background singers on there in fact.  Probably so, because this album was co-produced by Brandi Carlile.  And she won the Best Country Album Grammy with this disc.

Yeah, I might go watch this.  I'm not on fire about it, but it seems like she'd be a pretty lively show.  I hope she wears that thing from the Orlando shows above and dances like Elaine some more.