Randy Travis - Storms of Life
Randy Travis brought to country music a solid, glorious baritone/bass, a powerful delivery, and a tremendous sense of music selection. With this, his debut album, Randy gathered songs written by such greats as Paul Overstreet ("On The Other Hand," "Diggin' Up Bones," "No Place Like Home"), wove them together with some superior playing (from musicians such as Mark O'Connor, Jerry Douglas, Terry McMillan, James Stroud, and Larry Byrom), then added excellent, light-handed production by Kyle Lehning and Keith Stegall, and finally added his own unsurpassed voice to deliver a debut that stands out not only as a superior first album, but simply a superior album.
From track to track, Randy's absolute genius as a vocalist shines through. He burst onto the country music scene, captured immediately the ACM Top New Vocalist of 1985, then proceeded to sweep the awards in 1986 with Storms of Life. He took home the ACM Album, Single, and Song of the Year, the CMA Horizon Award, and won Performance Magazine's New Country Act of the Year. And it's not hard to understand why. This is a honky-tonkin' joy of an album, country from beginning to end, as pure as a mountain snowfall.
From the first track, the powerful true country strains of the almost-cheatin' song "On The Other Hand," Randy's brilliance with a song shines on this album. Lesser-known tracks such as the title song, "The Storms of Life," "No Place Like Home," and the two self-penned tracks, "Send My Body" and "Reasons I Cheat," also amply demonstrate Randy's simple, yet breathtaking, appeal. It's beyond me why my favorite of Randy's songs, the sweet two-stepper, "1982," didn't chart higher than it did (stopping at #6; however, it came before the two more famous tracks). Randy Travis didn't just help jump-start the neotraditionalist sound, he was a formidable masthead, a true country performer who retains just as much magnificence today as he did with Storms of Life.
Reviewed by Kathy Coleman.
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