Flashback: Bobbie Cryner, Girl of Your Dreams

How great was it to see Jonathan highlight Tony Brown in his most recent Album Review Roundup? Brown is apparently still working his producer magic in 2025 with Dee White’s latest album Heart Talkin’.

It has been a blast to work through Brown’s minor projects from the ’80s and ’90s in this feature, and see what an essential player he was in those boom years of country music. There is genuinely nothing questionable or debatable about his credentials and his 2025 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

For me, there was no more impactful an album produced by Brown than his work with Berry Beckett in 1996 on Bobbie Cryner’s sophomore album Girl of Your Dreams. Interestingly, Beckett, along with Harold Shedd, also co-produced Chely Wright’s 1994 debut Woman in the Moon.

This Cryner album, however, was a full-on listening experience, bordering on a religious one. I was already a massive fan of her stunning 1993 eponymous Doug Johnson produced Epic release. I was agog for her debut on MCA with Brown at the helm.

And it delivered on every front. To this day, I am hard-pressed to name an album that hit me harder after just one listen.

 

Cryner forewent the bluesier, gritter style of her magisterial debut for a more refined and polished sound. This elegant music sounded like an album from the sixties; it was sultry, strong, and a vivisection of the heart.

As an artist, Cryner is special because she was so widely adored as a singer-songwriter despite her lack of radio or sales success. Her only two albums are essentially celebrated as unicorns, rare instances of musical grace, wonder, and power. They are magical.

As elusive as Cryner is as an artist, her music has a grounded timeless permanence

Back in 2010, Kevin was already Searching for Bobbie Cryner. Here it is 2025, and the urgency and vitality of her music is no less intense or immediate for me; Girl of Your Dreams left a listening scar that time seemingly cannot erase.

I almost feel silly choosing this album as a Flashback selection as so many wonderful observations and comments have already been made about this album that matters to so many, on this very site alone no less.

Nonetheless, in the spirit of honouring Tony Brown and exalting Bobbie Cryner, here I go.

From the opening cover of Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man,” Cryner establishes that she has something significant to say and demonstrate; she can sing.  Pay attention.

The second track is “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength,” a wonderful song of resilience and perseverance in light of facing up to one’s weaknesses, She can also write; you best listen to what she has to say.

Come the third song, Cryner. takes aim for a kill shot to the heart with the title track. She opens the emotional floodgates with an eviscerating eye to the honesty and vulnerability of a failing relationship as revealed through an old love letter found in a pair of jeans while doing the laundry.

“Vision of Loneliness” might actually be my favourite song from the album. It simultaneously soars and collapses under the weights of the masks we wear to face the world. It is an exhausting and cosmopolitan sounding dark-take on something approaching manic-depression. It is a shattering listen.

She brilliantly works through a cover of Dottie West’s “Lesson in Leaving.”

“You’d Think He’d KnowMe Better” is unnerving in its deceitful nastiness. It is a brilliant song that toys with our loyalties as listeners.

Cryner dances through Hugh Prestwood’s “I Can’t Stand to be Unhappy.”

“Nobody Leaves” is terrifying, a song about nobody wanting to be the first to leave a relationship while still clinging to shreds of hope. It is mesmerizing.

Randy VanWarmers’ “Oh To Be The One” is the sweetest song of the set.

The tears fully flow with the final track “Just Say So.” It is a disarming request for a partner to share what’s on their mind. A song about freedom, fear, and the sweetest accommodations of love.

Along with Tony Brown, Bobbie Cryner and the Girl of Your Dreams album still deserve their flowers.