Country Love Songs is the debut album by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 country

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

 and alternative country

Alternative country

Alternative country is a loosely defined sub-genre of country music, which includes acts that differ significantly in style from mainstream or pop country music...

 singer/songwriter Robbie Fulks

Robbie Fulks

Robbie Fulks is an American alternative country artist originally from Pennsylvania but who is a longtime Chicago, Illinois resident...

, released in 1996.

Reception

Writing for Allmusic, music critic Jack Leaver referred to Fulks as "cleverly twisted, deliciously irreverent, and one of the best of the new country singer/songwriters" and wrote of the album "Musically, Country Love Songs supplies plenty of hardcore, bottle-tippin', honky tonk country, with a '50s production that sounds like it's supposed to be there. Fulks writes and sings country music that bears little or no resemblance to what dominates the airwaves; rather, his material harks back to an era when humor and dark subject matter shared the same page of a writer's composition book." In a story for No Depression prior to the release of the album, Kevin Roe wrote "Country Love Songs touches all of the right traditional country bases in showcasing Fulks’ knack for memorable melodies and gleefully left-of-center lyrics."

Track listing

All song by Robbie Fulks unless otherwise noted.

1. "Every Kind of Music But Country" (Tim Carroll) – 2:18
2. "Rock Bottom, Pop. 1" (Fulks, Dallas Wayne) – 2:38
3. "The Buck Starts Here" – 3:42
4. "(I Love) Nickels and Dimes" – 3:05
5. "Barely Human" – 3:45
6. "I'd Be Lonesome" – 2:44
7. "She Took a Lot of Pills (And Died)" – 2:41
8. "We'll Burn Together" – 2:50
9. "Let's Live Together" – 2:59
10. "The Scrapple Song" – 2:42
11. "Pete Way's Trousers" – 2:34
12. "Tears Only Run One Way" – 2:49
13. "Papa Was a Steel-Headed Man" – 3:27

Personnel

• Robbie Fulks
  Robbie Fulks
  Robbie Fulks is an American alternative country artist originally from Pennsylvania but who is a longtime Chicago, Illinois resident...
  
   – vocals, guitar
• Keith Baumann – lap steel guitar
• Tom Brumley
  Tom Brumley
  Tom Brumley was an American steel guitarist who played with Buck Owens and the Buckaroos in the 1960s, contributing to the group's "Bakersfield sound", and later spent a decade with Rick Nelson.-Biography:...
  
  – pedal steel
• Casey Driessen – fiddle
• Lou Whitney – bass
• Darren Wilcox – bass
• Brett Simons – bass
• Bobby Lloyd Hicks – drums
• Ora Jones – vocals
• Steve Rosen – fiddle, background vocals
• The Skeletons – background vocals
• Joe Terry – keyboards, piano
• D. Clinton Thompson – guitar

Production

• Greg Duffin – engineer
• Steve Albini – engineer
• John Golden – mastering
• Markus Greiner – design
• Elaine Moore – photography