Trisha Yearwood The Song Remembers When 1993

Trisha Yearwood has made plenty of fine records. Her eponymous debut was a huge success in 1991, and then her second, Hearts In Armor 1992 was a major step forward, and would become the record to be compared to everything that would follow. Thinkin' About You 1995, Everybody Knows 1996, Inside Out 2001, Jasper County 2005, and Heaven, Heartache and the Power of Love 2008 are all very good to excellent. More recently, Every Girl 2019 and The Mirror 2025 (where Yearwood co-writes every song) have been well received and are definitely worth hearing. She always sings everything with her pristine, pitch-perfect voice, and nails the appropriate emotion for each song. She has fun with the rockers and digs deep for the ballads.

Her third, The Song Remembers When, is as good as any of them, and may well have the single best collection of songs in her entire catalog. The title track is a lovely sentimental longing for lost love. Rodney Crowell's I Don't Fall In Love So Easy drips with heartache, and promise. Hard Promises To Keep tells of the fragility of love, and Willie Nelson harmonizes. Mr. Radio gets a faithful reading to Linda Ronstadt's version. Jude Johnstone's The Nightingale is a beautiful song given a wonderful reading here (I'm still partial to Jennifer Warnes' version). One In A Row is a great Willie Nelson play on words, and again, it's perfect with a Willie guitar solo. The record ends with Matraca Berg's Lying To The Moon, and again Yearwood's version is breathtaking.

There's three other songs, and Better Your Heart Than Mine, If I Ain't Got You, and Here Comes Temptation are all upbeat ones that keep things from getting too slow. Every song is great. Every song. No weak songs, not even a "pretty good" one. Songs, production, accompaniment, and A++ singing. This is one of those rare perfect records.