Little Love Affairs
,
Nanci Griffith
's second
MCA Records
album, and sixth album overall, was the crucial release in her attempt to achieve success as a Nashville-based
country
artist, and in that context it was a failure. But it was also an artistic success, containing 11 well-written and well-performed songs in the reflective style that the
singer/songwriter
had established previously.
Griffith
's first
MCA
album,
Lone Star State of Mind
, had been a moderate seller, reaching the Top 40 and spawning two
chart singles.
prefaced
with perhaps its most overtly
song,
"Never Mind,"
written by veteran songwriter
Harlan Howard
, and prominently featuring a pedal-steel guitar in its arrangement, but the single's failure to crack the
Top 40 suggested trouble, confirmed when the album peaked lower than
.
"Never Mind"
gave a good indication of the album's theme, embodied in its title, of carefully examining the romantic lives of common people.
Howard
's lovers were itinerant laborers who came out of the Depression, and other songs also looked back at stories of romance past, such as
's compositions
"Love Wore a Halo (Back Before the War),"
and
"So Long Ago."
The music, supplied by
's backup band and
New Grass Revival
, was in her familiar
country-folk
style, and her vocals, with their ringing, aching tone, conveyed the songs' sense of longing and regret effectively.
Country
critics and radio programmers complained that, if anything, she was too
, her voice having an off-putting twang and nasality, but that was just an excuse for rejecting her literate lyrics and sophistication. At 33, she wasn't about to become some empty-headed Nashville bimbo willing to mouth romantic cliches, and for that she paid the price of being denied
stardom. Her fans breathed a sigh of relief. ~ William Ruhlmann