I'm Still in Love With You

Al Green's second album of 1972 (Let's Stay Together came out only ten months earlier) would be worth owning if only for the extended intro of "Love and Happiness" — quite possibly the most sublime 40 seconds in the history of recorded music — and the smile-inducing "soul man in fashionable repose" cover photo. But every track on I'm Still In Love With You is as sweet and soulful as Green's football-shaped afro. "Look What You Done For Me" and the title track were deservedly massive hits, but it's a testament to Green's artistry (and Willie Mitchell's production) that the whole thing plays like a "greatest hits" album. Green's easy-grooving rendition of Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" sounds pretty much like you'd imagine it would (not that there's anything wrong with that), but his version of Kris Kristofferson's "For the Good Times" is absolutely devastating and definitive. "Love and Happiness" is certainly the most celebrated song on the record, but "Simply Beautiful" just might be the Green aficionado's choice: a hushed, self-penned meditation on love that's laced with bluesy classical guitar filigrees, it's a borderline free-associative monologue that comes off as half-prayer, half-threat. Beautiful, it most certainly is; simple, it… read more »