All My Records: Alabama “Dixieland Delight / Very Special Love”
For most of my life, I’m sure I absolutely hated Alabama (the band), whether I knew it or not. I’m still not sure exactly how I feel about them. They’ve got a few decent songs—Dixieland Delight being one of them—but they’ve always struck me as somewhat hollow and inauthentic. I don’t have much to base this on, other than my gut, but that’ll do for me.
I’m not trying to knock them, necessarily, but in the pantheon of country music, there’s a lot more truth and soul to be found elsewhere. They in no way stack up to the greats, even if a handful of their songs are catchy as hell.
Dixieland Delight is a rocker. It’s a genuinely good song, in a total pop kind of way. In fact, I believe this song, and others like it, are what paved the way for the formulaic garbage that passes for country music these days. It’s not Alabama’s fault (this record is from 1983, for Chrissakes), but I believe the timeline of crap can be traced all the way back to this era, and this band.
The B-Side, Very Special Love, is a bore. It’s typical, slowed down, sentimental country. There’s not a lot of effort put into this one, which makes it more like a typical Alabama song than the A-Side. It’s not terrible, just forgettable.
