Album Review

Greg Adams [allmusic.com]

''I Want to Go With You'' spent six weeks at the top of the country chart and crossed over to the pop Top 40, becoming one of the biggest hits of the year and one of Eddy Arnold's biggest hits in the '60s. The song is a pure pop ballad with a luxuriant vocal chorus that sounds more like something Vic Damone would have recorded in the '50s than the product of a country artist, and that may be why Arnold's huge easy listening hits from the '60s are not as highly regarded today as his earlier country recordings: In the '60s, he had a huge following among older, traditional pop lovers who have since sailed to glory on the ebb tide. Easy listening vocal music is a hard sell to most younger listeners and, consequently, Arnold's ultra-smoothie phase faces an ever-shrinking pool of potential listeners. The handful who remember Arnold from his heyday and appreciate the font of old-fashioned pop music he became will enjoy most of the album I Want to Go With You because it is molded in the image of its big hit single. A couple of mildly countrified cuts are slipped in toward the end to placate the country crowd, but the album is mainly a string-laden extravaganza of pop vocal music (even though many of the songs were written by Nashville songwriters) ably sung and arranged for maximum crossover appeal.