8 November 1973
“For The Good Times’ was written by Kris Kristofferson and appeared on his 1970 debut album. As you’d expect from an outlaw country original by an outlaw country original, Kristofferson’s own version is a world-weary, heartsore ballad charged with relatable feeling.
Perry Como had something of a revival in 1973 by inching his Sinatra-esque style towards the sort of Doonican-esque avuncular cabaret-folk that seemed to have a reserved slot on every shiny-floor light-entertainment TV show of the ’70s. He’d seen chart action earlier that year with a version of dreadful Don McLean’s dreadful ‘And I Love You So’. Here, he boils Kristofferson’s ‘For The Good Times’ down to the same sort of treacly schmaltz, as if it were a mere Don McLean song: no feeling, just sentimentality. Old people probably liked it, along with whatever ’60s Irish showband singers and showband fans were using this sort of thing as a coping mechanism for the ’70s.
Never fear, though: I can guarantee you that Ireland’s next chart-topping single of 1973 will instead have as much action as the average episode of Airwolf.
