It's always weird to come to an iconic album after having heard a great deal about it, sometimes for years and years before actually listening to it - it can be damnably hard to get past all the mythology and hagiography, and the sheer aura of the thing, to try to have some kind of direct or true experience of the music, never mind the desire to know where it 'fits' in with everything else and why it's 'important' (and matters're unlikely to be improved be actively trying to achieve such a listening experience). In this case, though, I already knew two of the record's key tracks, "Son Of A Preacher Man" and "Breakfast In Bed", close to inside-out, which made a bit of a difference; then, too, and probably more importantly, there's something about Dusty's singing which seems to render all that stuff irrelevant and just cut directly to the heart of the matter.
"Son Of A Preacher Man" is one of her most famous songs, if not the most famous, especially since its use on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, and deservedly so, for it's glorious and life-affirmatory. But it's "Breakfast In Bed" that's my favourite - it's nigh on perfect, shivering with feeling and drama...in his liner notes, Elvis Costello suggests that "[t]his track may have the greatest vocal entrance of Dusty's career" and then goes on to pick out my favourite moment on the album - the swell of the way she sings the line "She's hurt you again, I can tell".
The other songs on the album are uniformly good - there doesn't even seem any point in picking out individual tracks. Through them all, it seems as if she's singing for all she's worth while also conveying every nuance and detail of the song's voice and what lies beneath it - there's a sensitivity and a grace to her singing which is remarkable and comes down, crystal clear, through the years, and the band and producers do their jobs, wreathing her voice in horns, strings and all the accoutrements and bathing the album in a warm, timeless glow.
Also, incidentally, I think I'm beginning to develop the ability to pick Carole King compositions...
