“Lead Me On”
Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn
Written by Leon Copeland
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
November 13, 1971
The cool thing about the big three superstar duet partners of this era – George & Tammy, Porter & Dolly, and Conway & Loretta – is that they don’t sound at all like they’re supposed to be singing together.
We get these cool contrasts of voices that sound like real people talking, which counterintuitively makes these distinctive superstar vocalists sound like the domestic every day characters they’re playing in their songs.
Conway and Loretta had some of the most creative cheating songs of the day, and I especially love this one. Usually when you say someone led you on, you’re blaming them for fooling you. Here, they desperately beg each other to be fooled. All they want is a promise that the other person will take the blame for tempting them to cheat. Rather than making a deal with the devil that would render them personally culpable, they absolve their own guilt by being the devil for their partner in crime.
Does that math work out morally? Not in the least. But it’s good enough to justify some adultery for these desperate souls who are very willing to be led astray.
“Lead Me On” gets an A.
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I, too, love this one. Loretta gets the chance to outshine Conway on the vocals here, and she does not disappoint!
These duets were mini-movies. Fully realized characters feeling real emotions ranging from lust to vulnerability to love.
The instrumentation and production is spot-on, in total service to the story and the singers. I think that’s Harold Bradley on the bass and John Hughey on the steel guitar.
Doug, you are absolutely right. Loretta is totally taking charge here on all fronts.
I struggle to describe how much I love listening to performances like this, I feel like a kid eavesdropping on a phone conversation my mother was having with a friend I was never intended to hear. It is all vaguely scandalous and thrilling.
Of the classic country music duet partners Kevin identifies,only Conway and Loretta were purported to have had a platonic relationship. The way this song throbs and smoulders suggest otherwise, but that might just be an indicator of their mastery of the form.
About this hit, Bill Friskics-Warren said, “The record starts tentatively, as do many of Twitty’s records, leaving plenty of from for crescendo and climax.”
Anticipation never sounded so nervous or so inevitable.
Have I disliked a single hit from the ’70s so far?
One of many great songs by this duo – I find it hard to determine which of their efforts is my favorite. worth an “A”
This is probably my favorite Conway & Loretta duet. “A+”. This is a song and emotion you can really only get in the country genre. Out of the three superstar duets of this era I think they were absolutely the best.
Love this record definitely an A plus however the very best Loretta-Conway is yet to come with Louisiana woman, Mississippi Man. I agree with what Leon says regarding Loretta and Conway and also George and Tammy in that they don’t sound like they were meant necessarily to be duet singers but that’s absolutely not the case with Porter and Dolly whose Harmony is just amazing and sounds like a professional duet only act. Note on this “duet” Loretta and Conway don’t sing a word together!!! Loretta really scorches these lyrics, I almost wish it had been a solo song for her ( it originally I’ve been written as a song for female soloist and it been a flop single for Bonnie Owens and was also covered by Norma Jean.
As much as I like Porter & Dolly, George & Tammy, Loretta & Conway, my favorite duos were two from the 1960s – Ernest Tubb & Loretta Lynn and George Jones & Melba Montgomery. The latter two duos were personality plus, even if not quite as technically proficient as the “big three”
I remember Elvis Costello saying he preferred Jones’s duets with Montgomery over the ones with Wynette, and Vince Gill saying that he had found in Patty Loveless “my Melba Montgomery to my George Jones.” So, you are in good company – lots of people appreciate how wonderful they were together (and add me to the list). “Please Be My Love” wasn’t their biggest hit, but it’s the song that I think best illustrates how well each’s voice complements the other’s, especially as it’s a bluegrass record, so atypical of Jones’s style. I also think it was the real-life dramatics of his private life with Wynette that made their duets a decade or so later make people forget the earlier ones with Montgomery. But, their recordings speak for themselves, and they were just fantastic together.
If anyone remembers when CMT did that 100 Greatest Duets countdown and concert probably twenty years ago or so, I was mostly okay with its list except for one glaring thing, and that was that “Lead Me On” failed to make it. This song is what Twitty and Lynn’s magic was all about. Peter Saros’s comment above about their duets being mini-movies is spot on, and boy does this one make the listener believe the story being sung is the cold hard truth – I am sure lots of country music devotees in late 1971 heard it and had their suspicions that the two of them were just friends… :)
Bonus Beats:
Here’s Loretta Lynn performing “Lead Me On” with Trace Adkins, live at the Grand Ole Opry:
https://youtu.be/3H3mPUlfEWE
What a great example of a song that works in the classic confines of country music in a cheating song but places a unique twist on it. I agree that Loretta gets to outshine Conway which is a nice surprise as well! One of their best duets, though I pretty much liked everything they did together.