A Little Good News

Album: A Little Good News (1983)
Charted: 74
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Songfacts®:

  • This song struck a cord with listeners who were exasperated with the inflation/recession cycle, crime wave, and renewed Cold War with an increasingly aggressive Soviet Union that was going on at the time. These stories were all over the news, making us wonder, Isn't there any good news to report? >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Mike - Santa Barbara, CA
  • "A Little Good News" was written by the Nashville songwriters Charlie Black, Rory Bourke and Tommy Rocco. When Bourke showed up for the session, the other two were watching The Today Show, hosted by Bryant Gumbel.

    "It was one of those periods where every story was worse than the one before," Black recalled in the Billboard Book of #1 Country Hits. "We were sitting there with that first cup of coffee and I was saying, 'Golly, have you been listening to the news? I just can't stand it anymore. It hurts to turn on the TV.'"

    In the song, they had Anne Murray wake up to find her kids watching the news; Gumbel gets a mention in the line:

    Bryant Gumbel was talkin' 'bout the fighting in Lebanon
  • "A Little Good News" was the lead single and title track from Anne Murray's 12th album. The song was a #1 Country hit in the US and her native Canada. It won the Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Performance and the CMA for Single Of The Year. The album won the CMA for Album Of the Year.

Comments: 4

  • Lauta from Marion NcToo much pain, the Arbury Murder hurts soooooo bad. I thought of this song, nothing chabges
  • Karenr from Colorado I have always loved Anne Murry's songs and I think this is a song for today.
  • Arthur from New JerseyA number one country song that could have been number one pop. While most would consider "You Needed Me" to be her signature song, "A Little Good News" might be her best.
  • Staley from Dallas, TxI find it heartening to hear this song today, since so many of the problems mentioned in it have gone away (or at least made some progress). When I was a kid, it seemed like nothing ever changed. But when the Cold War ended, it seemed (to me at least) that history started moving again.
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