Anne Murray - Love Song (1974)

“Love Song” by Anne Murray (1974)

Release Date: February 1974
Produced by Brian Ahern
Genre: Country, Pop
Label: Capitol

Chart Positions: #5 (Canada), #24 (US)
Certifications: N/A

Singles: “Send A Little Love My Way” #25 (Canada), #72 (US), #10 (Canada Country), #6 (Canada Adult Contemporary), #79 (US Country), #10 (US Adult Contemporary), “A Love Song” #1 (Canada), #12 (US), #88 (Australia), #1 (Canada Country), #1 (Canada Adult Contemporary), #5 (US Country), #1 (US Adult Contemporary), “You Won’t See Me” #5 (Canada), #8 (US), #49 (Australia), #4 (Canada Adult Contemporary), #1 (US Adult Contemporary), “Just One Look” #11 (Canada), #86 (US), #50 (US Adult Contemporary)
Singles Certifications: N/A
Other Charting Tracks: “Son Of A Rotten Gambler” #1 (Canada Adult
Contemporary), #3 (Canada Country), #5 (US Country)

Best Tracks: “A Love Song,” “Just One Look,” “Real Emotion,” “You Won’t See Me,” “Son of a Rotten Gambler”

“Love Song” by Anne Murray (Click Here)

"Love Song" is the ninth studio album by Anne Murray issued in 1974 on Capitol Records. It peaked at #24 on the US Billboard Pop Albums chart and won a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance and was nominated in the "Best Selling Album" category in the 1975 Juno Awards. Anne Murray’s rendition of the song "Send a Little Love My Way" was featured in the Stanley Cramer film, “Oklahoma Crude,” and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song in 1973.

A highlight from the album is the Lennon-McCartney Beatles tune “You Won’t See Me,” which went on to be a big hit for Murray reching #8 in the US and #5 in Canada. Lennon is said to have told Murray that her version of "You Won't See Me" was his favorite Beatles cover ever. Murray herself is a confessed Beatles fanatic and has covered several other Beatles songs, including "Day Tripper" and "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You".

“A Love Song” was written specifically by Kenny Loggins (and Donna Lyn George) for Anne Murray. The song was a major crossover hit for Murray. In her native Canada, it topped all three singles charts: the overall Top Singles chart, the Country Tracks chart and the Adult Contemporary chart. In the United States, the song peaked at No. 5 on Billboard magazine's Hot Country Singles chart and just missed the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 12. The song fared even better there in the adult contemporary market — it became Murray's third chart-topper on Billboard's American Hot Adult Contemporary Singles chart. This was the second time Anne charted with a Loggins & Messina song, having reached the Top 10 with her version of "Danny's Song" in 1973.

"A Love Song" (1974)

Anne was obviously a Kenny Loggins fan as she included a cover of the Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina penned "Watching The River Run" on this album. Murray's rendition is very similar to Loggins and Messina's with a homegrown feel to it.

Both "A Love Song" and "Watching The River Run" appeared on the Loggins and Messina album "Full Sail" which was released in October 1973.

The album's fourth single "Just One Look," a cover of Doris Troy's 1963 Top Ten was fairly popular in Canada but barely made a mark in the US. Though it's b-side "Son of a Rotten Gambler" gained quite a bit of traction on the country music charts in both the US and Canada. "Son of a Rotten Gambler" was written by Chip Taylor who is known for having written the mega-hit "Angel In The Morning" and the Troggs' 1966 classic "Wild Thing."

Murray gives us a great bluesy cover of Alan O’Day’s “Real Emotion.” We know Alan O’Day from his 1977 million selling chart topping hit “Undercover Angel” and Helen Reddy’s #1 hit in 1974 “Angie Baby,” which O’Day wrote. Anne Murray covered Alan O’Day’s “Caress Me Pretty Music” for her 1976 album “Keeping In Touch.”

In their review of this album Rolling Stone magazine commented, "if 1974 is to be the year for female pop, Anne Murray may prove to be it's most talented proponent.

Anne Murray (1974)

Link to “Love Song” (Click Here)

ANNE MURRAY

Cher - Dark Lady (1974)

“Dark Lady” by Cher (1974)

Release Date: May 1974
Produced by Snuff Garrett
Chart Positions: #69 (US), #33 (Canada), #86 (Australia)
Certifications: N/A

Singles: “Dark Lady” #1 (US, Canada, Sweden), #4 (France, South Africa), #10 (Norway), #15 (Netherlands), #17 (Australia, Holland), #22 (Belgium), #36 (UK)
“Train Of Thought” #27 (US), #10 (France), #18 (Canada), #84 (Australia)
“I Saw A Man And He Danced With His Wife” #42 (US), #31 (Canada)
“Rescue Me” #82 (Canada)

“Dark Lady” is Cher’s eleventh studio album and her fifth (and final) for MCA Records (the first two were on Kapp-MCA). Released the year following “Half Breed”, “Dark Lady” is very similar, like an extension of that album with an inclusion of a rock edge and a dark edge that did not exist on “Half Breed.” The album was produced by Snuff Garrett. He produced four albums for Cher in the 1970s and also produced a few Sonny & Cher albums as well as Bobby Vee, Gary Lewis and the Playboys. One of the biggest hits he produced is Vickie Lawrence’s “The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia.”

“Dark Lady” by Cher (Click Here)

After the success of “Half-Breed,” Cher once again chose Snuff Garrett and Al Capps to produce “Dark Lady, her final album for MCA. During that same year, she divorced Sonny Bono, this ended their professional musical ties and television show for a while. Due to the success of previous albums produced by Garrett, “Dark Lady” followed the same narrative ballad style.

"Dark Lady", the album's first single release, reached #1 in the US, Canada and Sweden. The song became Cher's third solo U.S. #1 hit on March 23, 1974, and her last until "Believe" twenty-five years later. It also reached #3 on the US Adult Contemporary chart. "Dark Lady" also charted at #36 in the UK, #4 in France and South Africa, #10 in Norway and the Top 40 in many countries around the world. "Dark Lady" was written and composed by The Ventures' keyboard player, Johnny Durrill. He recalled: "I spent a week in Snuff Garrett's office playing him songs, and Cher ended up recording “Carousel Man.” Later, when I was on tour in Japan with the Ventures, I was writing an interesting song. I telegraphed the unfinished lyrics to Garrett. He said to 'make sure the b#!ch kills him.' Hence, in the song both the lover and fortune teller were killed." Thus, "Dark Lady" may with some accuracy be described as a murder ballad, even though the narrator of its lyrics essentially commits a crime of passion. The "Dark Lady" of the song's title is a gypsy fortune teller in New Orleans with a history of disdain for men (the narrator of the song describes seeing scratches on the inside of the teller's limousine from her previous conquests). The narrator follows the fortune teller's limousine to her lair and pays money for a fortune; as a result of the fortune, she learns that her lover has been unfaithful to her with, "someone else who is very close to you". Advised to leave the fortune teller's shop, never to return, and to forget she has ever seen the fortune teller's face, the narrator returns home in a state of shock, unable to sleep, and then realizes to her horror that she had once smelled, in her own room, the very perfume the fortune teller had been wearing. Sneaking back to the fortune teller's shop with a gun, she catches her lover and the fortune teller "laughing and kissing", and shoots them both to death.

"Dark Lady"

The album’s opening track "Train of Thought," written by Alan O’Day (“Undercover Angel,” Helen Reddy’s “Angie Baby”), was the second single release. Though it was a sizeable hit through various parts of the world it was not quite the hit as “Dark Lady,” the album’s first single. The song is a raw and fast-moving rock track that reached #27 in the US and #9 on the US Adult Contemporary chart.

The third single chart was yet another story song of broken love to make a new love connection. “I Saw A Man and He Danced With His Wife,” a big band styled ballad touches on an emotion Cher was living after her recent divorce from her long-time husband Sonny Bono. The song was even less successful as a single than “Train Of Thought,” just missing the US top 40 making it to #42 and #31 in Canada.

A cover of Fontella Bass’ 1965 #1 hit “Rescue Me,” was a hint at what was ahead for Cher in the late 80s and early 90s.  The song contains a timeless vocal and musical arrangement that has aged very well. In the US the song was released as a promotional single and as a single throughout Europe but it did not chart. It did chart at #86 in Canada.

Bob Stone, who wrote her first success of the 1970s, “Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves,” wrote the albums closing track “Apples Don’t Fall Far From The Tree.” “What’ll I Do” is a cover of the theme song from the 1974 film “The Great Gatsby.” “Miss Subway of 1952” is a tribute to Bette Midler as she sings the lyric, “To my idol the divine.”

Cher (1974)

Link to “Dark Lady” (Click Here)

CHER