Country Classics: Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad

Back when my husband was courting me, I was living dirt cheap in someone's attic in Portland, Oregon. No furniture, a mattress that had previously been used as a dog's bed, a pile of textbooks for school, and, of course, a boombox that played cassette tapes. (Fistbump to everyone who knows what boomboxes and cassette tapes are).

Portland is kind of a hipster paradise, but I'd never managed to restrain my musical tastes to fit into the scene. I'd been on the receiving end of more than a few incredulous hipstery eye rolls regarding my listening choices.

And although my husband to be didn't know it, there was one tape I listened to regularly that, if he'd sneered at it, would have had him kicked down the stairs to my garret, never to be welcomed back again. It's one of my favorite albums of all time. Luckily, upon hearing it for the first time, his comments were of admiration and praise. Quite right, too.  So I married him.

Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad, Tammy Wynette's debut album, was released on the Epic label back in 1967, also the year of my birth. There isn't a song on it that I don't love hard, but Almost Persuaded is my favorite.  I sing it at my husband from time to time...just to keep him on his toes *grin*