Review #306: I’m Still In Love With You, Al Green
#306: I’m Still In Love With You, Al Green
If you ask Rolling Stone, this is a sex record. It’s not. It’s a monogamous love record. Al Green is in sexy true love with you, YOU, and this is his love letter.
I was first struck by how flexible and changing his voice was. At first, on the title track “I’m Still In Love With You,” I thought he sounded a bit like Cee Lo Green. Then on the sweetheart-string-ridden “What a Wonderful Thing Love Is,” I thought his voice had a rock and roll rasp to it. On “One Of These Good Old Days,” he screeches like an angel.
As you might guess from the album title, this record is all about monogamous love. From the slick, stringy “I’m Glad Your Mine” to the old-school-movie-prom-dance-scene-soundtrack “For The Good Times,” it’s clear that Al Green has only one thing on his mind.
I get sick of an overabundance of love songs, but there’s a sophisticated musicality here that puts Green years ahead of his time. I loved this quote from producer Willie Mitchell: “We used chords that people never used before. … Al Green always wanted to advance.” You can hear some of those chords on “Simply Beautiful,” a song that’s been sampled by artists from Talib Kweli to Mary J. Blige.
But my personal favorite was “Love and Happiness,” a bluesy, groovy, horny song that builds and builds on a slow, thudding beat. Loving makes you do right/ Loving makes you do wrong. It’s complicated and uncertain, just like love.
Best Cover: Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman.” Though I’ll admit, Van Halen does it better.
Second Best Cover: “Look What You Done For Me.” Okay, it’s not technically a cover, but it does sound suspiciously like “Let’s Stay Together.”
Unhappy Addendum: Green’s sister Maxine Green went missing from an assisted living facility in 2013 and hasn’t been seen since.
