“Havin’ Hard Times” (1980) – John Anderson * LP: John Anderson * Written by John Anderson and Lionel Delmore * Produced by Norro Wilson * Label: Warner Bros. Records
“Havin’ Hard Times,” the first song on John Anderson’s 1980 debut album, starts out with the same kind of flangey, minor-key arpeggios and dank atmosphere that surrounds such geographically and stylistically faraway records from that same year by U2 or The Cure. The lyrics, too, reflect the era’s economic doldrums. This was a subject that found more frequent musical expression on the other side of the Atlantic, although Anderson’s imploring drawls do reach backward to the American Dust Bowl and forward to Farm Aid. The rest of his album veers away from its opener’s stark social commentary, as does the rest of his successful career. That opening track, though, still reps its era with wide-angle authority, retaining all the promise of how country music in that forthcoming decade might have sounded.