In Your Dreams - the best single potential gets dropped

[RockALittle250]

Originally Posted by darklinensuit

Feh, I'm not that impressed by "Italian Summer" as a single. The repetitive lyrics hardly showcase her songwriting skills,, her voice sounds powerful but not as beautiful as on some other tracks, and I'm sick of her being marketed along the a/c route.

"In Your Dreams" is indeed quite radio-friendly. Because it sounds like a Tom Petty song, I think it could do well. More importantly, unlike many of her other recent rock songs, IYD has a great, solid vocal from start to finish - power, vibrato, timing. Her mature voice tends to sound either flat or strained on at least parts of almost every rock song she has done since the mid-90s. Not on this one. Additionally, the lyrics are distinct enough to be Stevie-esque without being too weird for the general public. Quite a balancing act. But yeah, when this song was dropped from the tour, I figured that meant it would not be a single. Dumb. This one and TISL, of all Stevie's solo title tracks, could have done well on radio, but her people went for a/c singles like "Every Day" and "Secret Love".

As I've said before, "Moonlight" will be fine (or at least more appropriate to radio constraints) if they cut the 1st 40-some seconds out & start with the "She's lonely..." part. If they start editing songs down, I think "Wide Sargasso Sea" could do great without most of the first verse: as I've said, start with the first "Even though they were so in love..." WSS & "New Orleans" are songs I always come back to - I wish the latter could have been a single.

- Jake

I agree with just about everything you said here, except that WSS is too meandering to be a single. It has a great story, but it's a little too involved to perform well as a single. Secret Love and FWIW display great songwriting and logistically, have the song structure that singles are built upon. And IYD absolutely should be on radio, but for some reason, I have a strong feeling that the 3rd single (if there is one) will be Moonlight or Annabel Lee.