Consumer Guide Album

Anne Murray: I'll Always Love You [Capitol, 1979]
Murray's third album with Jim Ed Norman continues her gradual revitalization. Norman does clean, honest, Nashville-quality work, Murray gives forth with the old sensible spunk, and the singles break country and cross over just like they're supposed to. But the potential a few of us perceived in her five years ago is gone. Then Murray seemed to have a shot at women's pop, in the honorific way that term was used after Warhol and the Beatles--a Canadian gym teacher who could rock and roll, a militantly ordinary audience with a lesbian fringe. Now she's just quality MOR, singing the El Lay songbook (only two Canadian composers here, one of whom is Jesse Winchester) like a down-to-earth Emmylou, or Linda without charisma. Which means that exactly how good her records come out no longer matters. B-