Norma Tanega - I Don't Think It Will Hurt If You Smile (1971)

It's not an overstatement to say that the success Norma Tanega experienced with 1966's international hit "Walkin' My Cat Named Dog" dramatically changed the course of her life. Promotional obligations took her to London, where she performed on the TV show Ready, Steady, Go! and met Dusty Springfield, who became her partner for six years. While living in London, Tanega wrote songs for Springfield and Blossom Dearie and recorded two albums of her own. Though the music from 1969's Snow Cycles didn't see the light of day until the release of 2022's excellent compilation I'm the Sky: Studio and Demo Recordings 1964–1971, the wide-open, psychedelic love songs of 1971's I Don't Think It Will Hurt If You Smile offer a heartfelt expression of her London years and a highly individual take on the era's sounds and moods. Working with the Viscounts' Don Paul and multi-instrumentalist Mike Moran, Tanega keeps up with trends on lushly layered hippie jams like "Now Is the Time" and "What More in This World Could Anyone Be Living For," both of which are more personal than the average peace-and-love anthem. Her growth as a singer and songwriter makes itself known on "Beautiful Things," an elegant call to live in the moment that approaches Springfield levels of smoky sophistication. Smooth saxophone and hand drums grace "Illusion," a bossa nova-tinged idyll that echoes Tanega's songwriting collaborations with Antônio Carlos Jobim. I Don't Think It Will Hurt If You Smile's forays into baroque pop are especially winning; on "Elephants Angels and Roses," Tanega's head-over-heels mood is buoyed by breezy harpsichords. Though the mood isn't quite as playful as it was on Walkin' My Cat Named Dog, Tanega's whimsy resurfaces on instrumental doodles like "Cowfold," which combine the refined sounds of harpsichord and autoharp with melodies indebted to country and ragtime. The sardonic viewpoint that made "You're Dead" a cult favorite years after its release is present only on the standout "Nothing Much Is Happening Today," the closest the album gets to a bad trip ("Everything begins and then it's over all too soon/The people who will smile at you begin to frown at noon," Tanega sings over an elastic bass line and vertiginous strings). However, her unabashed sincerity is exactly what makes I Don't Think It Will Hurt If You Smile so special, whether on the beaming folk-pop of "Magic Day" or the hymnal "Stranger," where she notes, "I am a stranger to this time/My life has never been in rhyme." The album's failure to connect with listeners at the time of its release is a matter of timing rather than quality -- I Don't Think It Will Hurt If You Smile documents a charming chapter in the life of a singer/songwriter coming into her own.~Heather Phares