THE LINER NOTES

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With the 1971 release of this fifth LP from her Columbia catalog, Lynn Anderson leaves no doubt in anyone’s mind or ear who the leading lady of the Countrypolitan sound in Nashville is.

 

Once again moving across a musical landscape from rock to folk to stone country, ‘How Can I Unlove You’ shows a singer continuing to grow and embrace the talent she now feels to be fully in control of.  Drawing again from the Joe South catalog, the title track has echoes of South’s ‘Rose Garden’, but the similarities end there. Where ‘Rose Garden’s’ storyteller was resolute and realistic, unafraid of loss, here is a woman unsure of how she can continue on. And if there was ever any doubt that Lynn Anderson was still country, her flipped takes on husband-producer Glenn Sutton’s classic, “What Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)” and the Freddie Hart signature, “Easy Lovin’” don’t just erase any doubt, they nuke it. And Sutton’s ballad, “Simple Words”, belies a deeply felt, complex honesty and vulnerability in one of Lynn’s most underrated performances.

 

But in the midst of everything Countrypolitan on this twelfth release lays the album’s biggest surprise; an understated, stripped down cover of the Carole King standard, “You’ve Got a Friend”. Sung with an uncharacteristic tenderness, Lynn brings both an immediacy and intimacy to the song, her vocal unencumbered and unaffected by overproduction, making it one of the most personal and powerful recorded performances of her career.

 

Balanced by six additional tracks, including a dobro-infused, harmonied version of John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads”, a retread of Liz and Casey Anderson’s “All Day Sucker” and "There's Never Been Anyone Like You", from Jerry Foster and Bill Rice, ‘How Can I Unlove You’ marks Lynn’s fourth Number One release, and the LP that would set the stage for one of the most important, and critically-acclaimed albums of her career.

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J Buck Ford