Album Review

Greg Adams [allmusic.com]

It is telling that Somebody Like Me, one of the blandest middle-of-the-road pop records Eddy Arnold made in the '60s, was also one of his most commercially successful. Its strong sales performance explains why the so-called Tennessee Plowboy came to make such an abundance of easy listening records: a lot of people were buying them. There are several good songs, but the sweet, languid arrangements lack the moodiness and atmospherics of his best easy listening records. The limp interpretation of Bill Anderson's "The Tips of My Fingers" was a number three hit, and "Somebody Like Me" spent a month at number one. The appearance of "Lay Some Happiness on Me" a year before either Dean Martin or Bobby Wright had a hit with it is notable, but chart status notwithstanding, Somebody Like Me is not one of Arnold's strongest albums.