Search - Dan Seals :: Rage on

A great country album

Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 07/04/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For a while in the eighties, Dan Seals (formerly one-half of England Dan and John Ford Coley) was very popular on country radio stations, having a string of hits that all went to number one on the country charts. He maintained that success with this album although this album marks the end of his successful run. He recorded one more album for Capitol after this one but the singles from it only got limited airplay and Dan's career as a hit-maker ended rather suddenly.



With half the songs written or co-written by Dan (often with Bob McDill) and the other half written by other top songwriters, this album is a classic. The contribution of Bob McDill is particularly interesting as he wrote many songs for Don Williams, whose style is similar in many ways to Dan's. On four of the songs, Baillie and the Boys (Kathie Baillie, Michael Bonagura and Alan Le Boeuf) provide backing vocals.



The album begins with an upbeat trucking song (Big wheels in the moonlight) and ends with a song (Those) in which Dan expresses his wish that people would help those less fortunate than themselves. In between are many other excellent songs include Five generations of Rock County Wilsons (a sad story of rural life), Twenty-four hour love (a great ballad), Addicted (a Cheryl Wheeler song) and Fool me once fool me twice (a K T Oslin song).



Dan recorded several high quality country albums in the eighties of which this is just one. A popular compilation (The best) covers his earlier hits but does not include any of the tracks from this album, which therefore makes an ideal companion to that compilation."