Lawyers in Love (song)

"Lawyers in Love" is the first single and title track of Jackson Browne's 1983 album of the same name, Lawyers in Love. Though not as successful as Browne's previous single "Somebody's Baby", nonetheless at #13 it became Browne's fourth-highest peaking hit on the Hot 100 while in Canada peaking on RPM at #13. Browne wrote most of the songs on the album, including that one.[2][3][4][5]

"Lawyers in Love"
Single by Jackson Browne
from the album Lawyers in Love
B-side"Say It Isn't True"
ReleasedJune 1983[1]
Recorded1981-1982
GenrePop rock, new wave
Length4:18
Songwriter(s)Jackson Browne
Producer(s)Jackson Browne
Greg Ladanyi
Jackson Browne singles chronology
"Somebody's Baby"
(1982)		 "Lawyers in Love"
(1983)		 "Tender Is the Night"
(1983)

History

The music video for the "Lawyers in Love" took the title phrase and created a series of visual images surrounding it, especially themed on the Cold War. Browne played at least two or three parts, one as a yuppie-ish lawyer and one as an ordinary man wearing a white T-shirt, blue jeans, and a pair of black hi-top Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars, sitting in a catatonic state in front of a television, unable to assimilate the world's events.

Some analysts later saw "Lawyers in Love" as an evolving "bridge" between Browne's personal works and his 1980s' political works. Others saw it as dry commentary on American social mores and something of a scathing critique of the conservativism and materialism of the Ronald Reagan era, something that had been present in Browne's work as far back as "Take It Easy". "As probing (and hysterical) a dissection of cold-war politics in the Reagan era as the mainstream will allow," Jimmy Guterman wrote of the song in Rolling Stone in 1986.[6]

Christopher Connelly, in reviewing the album for Rolling Stone in 1983, paid extra attention to the title track, writing that "in 'Lawyers in Love,' God's interplanetary travelers discover Americans 'waiting for World War III,' shoveling down fast food in front of the television. All told, it's an unusually whimsical lyric from a man not noted for his sense of humor." As for the music, Connelly called the song "Browne's headiest track to date: a solid keyboard-and-guitar attack flavored by a chanting falsetto figure, a church-organ swell, sha-la-la backup vocals, even an old-fashioned modulation out of the middle eight."[7]

Charts
Year-end chart (1983)Rank
US Top Pop Singles (Billboard)[8] 87

References
  1. "Lawyers in Love - Jackson Browne". 45cat. Retrieved 2019-06-08.
  2. Billboard.com Jackson Browne Chart History. Accessed July 11, 2012.
  3. Whitburn, Joel. Billboard Hot 100 Charts - The Eighties. Wisconsin: Record Research, 1991.
  4. Paris, Russ. The Jackson Browne Fan Page, COMPLETE DISCOGRAPHY. Archived 2012-02-25 at the Wayback Machine Accessed July 11, 2012.
  5. Wikipedia Jackson Browne Discography.
  6. Guterman, Jimmy. Rolling Stone https://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/lives-in-the-balance-19860410 Review of Lives in the Balance April 10, 1986. Accessed July 13, 2012.
  7. Connelly, Christopher. Rolling Stone https://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/lawyers-in-love-19830929 Review of Lawyers in Love. September 29, 1983.
  8. "Talent Almanac 1984: Top Pop Singles". Billboard. Vol. 95 no. 52. December 24, 1983. p. TA-18.
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