Bradley's Buzz

bub111 Tanya Tucker – Girls Like Me
December 11, 2007
Original Release: February 1986
Capitol Records #12474

I don’t think there was ever anyone in the country music industry who doubted Tanya Tucker’s talent – from the minute she belted out “Delta Dawn” at age 13 until she signed with Arista in 1983, everyone knew she could sing. But a few cases and missteps in the eyes of industry boys and radio left our girl in a bit of a pickle. What was she going to do if she couldn’t sing and record? Was she going to retire at 28? Was she just going to fade away…. Not our little Miss T… instead somebody with a very good lick of sense signed our girl to Capitol Records in late 1985 and what transpired was a whole new breath of Tanya loving including a string of hit singles and albums that would last all the way through the late 90’s.

A few things happen to make Girls Like Me a very special album. First and foremost the songs are all incredible. If I’ve ever said there were a few low points on some of these past albums rest assured there isn’t a dull moment on this album. There’s also a revitalized Tanya in the voice, not that she has ever sounded bad or tired but there is just something brilliant about the way she performs these songs, a performance that lasts to this day – again I have to say had she not made those rock and pop albums I don’t think she would have ever found the voice she uses on her later recordings.

Two other reasons stand out for the brilliance of Girls Like Me – the return of Tanya’s favorite producer Jerry Crutchfield and the addition of songwriters Paul Davis and Paul Overstreet. Jerry will go on to produce every album she releases from this 1986 album through 1995’s Fire To Fire. The two Pauls will write numerous songs together and individually for Tanya through out the years and even duet with her on 1987’s #1 single “I Won’t Take Less Than Your Love.”

The most important thing Girls Like Me brings for me is the fact that this is the album where I truly discovered Tanya Tucker. Now I was quite young when Tanya was flashing her way through the tumbling 70’s but I was well aware of “Delta Dawn” and the TNT and Tear Me Apart albums, and I recall sitting at my Grandma’s coloring pictures when I heard “Should I Do It” on the radio, then of course with Glen Campbell, she was on every magazine when I was a wee one. But by the time Girls Like Me came out, I was older and wiser after all I was going through puberty.

While driving with my mother one day she had on her favorite country radio station when the opening guitar of “I’ll Come Back As Another Woman” started playing, and there was Tanya – raspy, sassy, bitchy and bluesy – with each verse I turned it up just a little more until finally on the bridge Tanya growled, “You’ll hear the echo of my prooomiise/ how you left and how I cried/ the one you finally give your heart toooo/ will leave you crying in the night….” I almost fell out of the car. This was the most intense performance of a country song I had ever heard. And with that Tanya T was back in my life. But more importantly she was back in everyone’s lives.

“I’ll Come Back As Another Woman” with its clever little take, not on reincarnation so much but as in “Some other woman is going to make you fall in love with her and then she’s gonna fuck you over just like you did to me..” only in more clever lyrics of course. “Someday you’ll wake up with your arms around your dream/ the love that she will make to you will be too good to believe/ you’ll say ‘I love you’ and for once it will be true/ you fall to fast to realize who you’re talking to…” I love it!

By 1986 our girl had been trhough life, she had been through drugs (and would continue to go through drugs actually until a forced Betty Ford stint in '88), and when I think of tough Tanya – the Texas Tornado, Ms. Bad Ass – I realize it’s this Tanya – the new Tanya of 1986 – the Tanya that would end up dominating the country charts from 1986 through her last album of 2002 where she still managed to have top forty singles.

And so it is Girls Like Me that becomes the ultimate in the Bubbatunes Tanya Reissues, and again it’s the songs that make this album (and those that follow) so great. I could almost see Tanya and Jerry picking out song after song deciding on one only if it sounded like a single because every single one of these gems probably could’ve been a hit.

The first single in fact wasn’t even the one I heard on the radio so many years ago – instead it’s the catchy first song “One Love At A Time” that actually sets up the whole resurgence of Tanya mania. Easily believable as a problem Miss T may have she wonders, “one’s got a birthday – it’s in December – which one’s in July – I can’t remember…” Poor girl, the whole having two men for lovers is just tearing her up and the song scored all the way to #3 on the charts making it her first top ten hit since “Can I See You Tonight” in 1980.

The second single, released in the summer, became her first #1 since “Here’s Some Love” a full decade before – the single “Just Another Love” has our girl tempting fate with a bad, bad man – “Well I’ve never been burned so I guess it’s my turn/ I’m gonna give your love a try…another love/ just another love/ I don’t want to be just another love on your list of hearts/ you’ve torn apart/ then cast them aside/ oh can’t you see/ that I don’t wanna be/ I don’t wanna be just anther love in your life…”

“Just Another Love” is a fast little country ditty, full of spirit and I do love it, but personally I think either “One Love At A Time” or “I’ll Come Back As Another Woman” should’ve been the #1, but hey MY single fav – “I’ll Come Back..” was finally released as the third single and it scored at #2 on the charts. That’s right, three top 3 singles all in a row – that’s how frickin’ good this collection is.

There was even a fourth single released – the ballad and such a good ballad at that – “It’s Only Over For You” which hit #8 – it shows the tender side of T, but even when tender, she can rip out your heart with her scratchier vocals and ‘been there been hurt’ delivery – “as I watch you falling in love/ you can’t see me falling apart/ and even though you hurt me I know/ I still love you with all of my heart/ but I won’t hide my face in a stranger’s embrace/ when we dance into each other’s view/ no don’t be surprised at the tears in my eyes/ cause it’s only over for you…” Just her incredible emphasis on every syllable and every note will make you feel for the poor girl – that is talent.

But the singles aren’t the only great things about Girls Like Me – for the very best thing on the entire album is found in the title track – a semi-poppy country song featuring keyboards and a little bit of an 80’s sound, but it’s once again the lyrics and the delivery of those lyrics that make it the best cut on the entire album – “Some girls have someone they can rely on/ they have a mailbox made for two/ well I feel that same need/ to have someone to lean on/ but that’s something I just never learned to do…” and chorus one, “Girls like me/ we believe in/ passion found on some secluded beach/ it’s hard to please a paperback dreamer/ always holding on to something out of reach/ love may never come that easily to girls like me…” Oh it is so frickin’ good, I put it on compilation CDs all the time, I listen to it on its own cause I love it, and I’ve included here cause you have to hear it too.

The sensitive, I’ve been hurt and I should know better is a theme that permeates the album. She isn’t singing little ballads to make you weep about how she’s just a poor little girl and the big old mean man hurt her so much she wants to die – no, not Tanya, she will tell you all the nitty gritty details of how she got screwed over but by the next song she’ll tell you how she’s going to get even, or at least continue on – “Fool Fool Heart” is an excellent interpretation of her ‘matter of fact’ attitude that I have come to love – “I thought I learned the last time around/ if I don’t trust my heart/ I won’t be let down…” Once again her performance is brilliant.

The one upbeat love ballad “You Could Change My Mind” also contains some lines about how love has kicked her ass in the past – “I swore I’d never fall in love again/ only a fool would go back where I’ve been/ once the heartache finally faded to an end/ I swore I’d never fall in love again…” and the chorus where she rips it to shizz – “But you, you could change my mind/ turn my heart around/ make these walls come tumbling down/ for you love could live again/ and it could be the real thing/ the true old fashioned kind/ oh you, you could change my mind…”

I’ve always been a big sucker for story songs – and though those touching little country ditties of mothers, children, grandparents dying are fun – I much prefer the ones where no one actually gets offed, we just live their story together. Of course Miss T has always had story songs but for Girls Like Me, she takes a poppy country tune and tells us the story of a boy in a hopped up Ford on his way to rob a liquor store because all he thought he needed was a little bit of cash to roll on – oh yes, it’s the little ditty known as “Somebody To Care”.

As the boy heads into Waco to rob the store (though he’d never robbed one before) he finds a girl on the side of road holding a sign that says, “San Antone” – he picks her up telling her he could take her to the other side of Waco, and she tells him all she really needs is a good timing man with a little time to spare and you guessed it, all either one of them really needed was somebody to care. I still love this song.

But I’m saving two of the best for last (and for your download) – the gutsy, heart wrenching, crotch grabbing, bluesnapping (??), dirty and deep “Daddy Long Legs.” Now there’s a couple things about this song – some good some bad.

Of course there is no bad in Tanya’s smoky performance of a man with the heart of a snake, who is ‘the kind of man who doesn’t have to talk/ he gets what he wants by the way he walks/ long legs moving in a pair of Levi’s/ looking so good it hurts my eyes…” This song is just a heap of a good ol dirty fun and Tanya’s oohs and growls is pure sexual in only that TT way. The thing that is mildly disturbing about this hot bed of sexual innuendo is that we always called my daddy, as in my father, daddy long legs. Let’s not even go there.

When I finally got around to buying the Girls Like Me album (on vinyl none the less – because that hot cover pic of Tanya would be bigger than on the cassette) imagine my ultimate surprise when we got to the final cut of the album and it was a cover of one of my other favorite scratchy voiced chanteuse – an excellent cover of Kim Carnes’ “Still Hold On” which happens to be one of the best songs Kim has ever written and one that Tanya totally makes her own here.

The lyrics are incredible and though Tanya keeps pretty much the same arrangement as Kim did on her version from 1981’s Mistaken Identity album – Tanya still manages to sing it with every ounce of her own conviction – “If I told you tonight that I was leaving/ would you walk away/ would you say lies that I wanted to hear/ and if I told you tonight that I loved you/ would you call my name/ take the blame/ or turn it all around again…” It’s an awesome lyric, it’s an awesome song, it’s an awesome performance.

As you have probably figured out Girls Like Me is a true highlight in the Tanya Tucker catalog and though it was released on CD once in the early 00’s, it is almost impossible to find and my artwork – along with the lyrics and such, make it so much better and definitely an album I HAD to have on CD.

For her next album Love Me Like You Used To, Tanya proved that her new found success was no fluke – that album alone would spawn two #1 singles plus another top ten hit, and all of her next albums – Strong Enough To Bend, Tennessee Woman, What Do I Do With Me, Can’t Run From Yourself, and Soon – would all spawn at least a #2 single and sometimes higher. Tanya was back and she took it all back with her. This is the true version of Tanya that everyone should have and love – for these are all the albums that provided us without any filler – every single song on every single one of those albums is a gem and it all started here with Girls Like Me.

Tanya Tucker – Girls Like Me (bub111)
Track List:
01. One Love At A Time 02. I’ll Come Back As Another Woman 03. Fool Fool Heart 04. Just Another Love 05. Girls Like Me 06. Somebody To Care 07. It’s Only Over For You 08. Daddy Long Legs 09. You Could Change My Mind 10. Still Hold On

Listen to these ditties and love up a girl like me… or you… oh you know Miss T at her finest:

Tanya Tucker – Girls Like Me
Tanya Tucker – Daddy Long Legs

Download entire album and artwork: