You're the Reason I'm Living

AMG Review of You're the Reason I'm Living

Richie Unterberger
All Music Guide

The title track of You're the Reason I'm Living was a number three hit single, generating an album that, like that hit, mined the soul-tinged country-pop that Ray Charles had plumbed successfully on his massive 1962 album Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music. Indeed, for some of the tracks Darin even used arranger Gerald Wilson, who had also arranged some of the songs on that Charles album. Darin was not as good at the approach as Charles was, though, and the result is a merely fair album that reflected a trend of the day. As on numerous Ray Charles country-pop cuts, the orchestration and backup vocals got a little overbearingly sappy sometimes. Swing jazz-like arrangements were applied to country material sometimes as well, as on the cover of Don Gibson's classic "Oh, Lonesome Me." It's not all country-pop; some numbers get much closer to swing jazz, like "Sally Was a Good Old Girl" and "Under Your Spell Again," even if the songs had country origins. Aside from "You're the Reason I'm Living," there was just one Darin original, "Now You're Gone" ("You're the Reason I'm Living"'s B-side), which was the highlight with its unusual moody melody and heartfelt pained vocal. In 2002, You're the Reason I'm Living and another 1963 Darin album, 18 Yellow Roses, were combined onto one CD by Exemplar Music.