Released November 1977 Release date November 1977 Label Monument Records | Artist Connie Smith Producer Ray Baker Genre Country pop | |
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Pure Connie Smith
(1977) The Best of Connie Smith
(1977) Similar Connie Smith albums, Other albums | ||
Pure Connie Smith is the thirtieth studio album by American country music artist Connie Smith. The album was released in November 1977 on Monument Records and was produced by Ray Baker. It was Smith's first album for the Monument label, after leaving Columbia Records earlier in the year.
Contents
Background
Pure Connie Smith contained ten tracks of new material. The only cover version included on the release was Dottie West's top-20 single "When It's Just You and Me". The album was recorded in a different format than any of Smith's previous albums; most of its material had a softer country pop sound. After signing with Monument in 1977, Smith's musical style moved towards not only country pop, but also slow tempo adult contemporary and upbeat disco. Allmusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine reviewed Smith's 1993 compilation Greatest Hits on Monument (which included three songs from Pure Connie Smith) and criticized her musical sound under Monument, stating, "This is commercial music that doesn't really work. It has a state-of-the-art production that dates instantly, walks the line between crossover pop and country-pop rather clumsly [sic], and lacks good material."
Slipcue.com reviewed Pure Connie Smith and gave it a more positive review, calling the album Smith's "swinger album" and further explaining that the album had a "much looser, casual sense of morality in evidence". The release was issued on a 12-inch LP album, with five songs on each side of the record.
Release
Pure Connie Smith only spawned one single. The album's first track, "Coming Around", was released as a single in March 1977, only becoming a minor hit in the United States. The song peaked outside the top 40, reaching number 58 on the Billboard Magazine Hot Country Songs chart shortly after its release. Pure Connie Smith itself failed to chart on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, as all of Smith's albums for the label "stiffed" according to Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic.
Side one
- "Coming Around"
- "That's What Loving You Can Do"
- "Don't Treat Me Like a Stranger"
- "Scrapbook"
- "Every Move You Make (Is Saying Goodbye)"
Side two
- "It Pleases Me to Please You"
- "I Don't Want to Be Free"
- "When It's Just You and Me"
- "You and Love and I"
- "Lovin' One Day at a Time"