Chill Factor

AMG Review of Chill Factor

Martin Monkman
All Music Guide

Merle Haggard's Chill Factor is one of his best efforts of the 1980s, marked by passionate singing and some of his strongest writing of the decade. The songs on the album, most of them written by Haggard, survey his usual concerns: love lost, love found, growing older, and the state of the world. Throughout, Haggard exhibits wisdom in his writing, a wisdom that is also evident in his singing. He's never really resigned to his fate, but he's not railing against it, either. The love songs are varied. "Chill Factor" is a ballad in which Haggard equates the cold outside with the cold he feels inside himself at losing a love, while "Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Star" picks up the tempo and gives a hint that his lost love may indeed return to him. At the other extreme, "Thanking the Good Lord" finds Haggard singing to a woman with whom he has found love. Haggard's songs of growing older include "Man from Another Time," which eloquently considers a May-December romance, and "Thirty Again," in which he pines for the days when he was 30, delivering the killer line, "They say life starts at fifty/ We've been lied to again my friend." In "1929," Haggard lists problems in the world -- hunger lines, skid-row life, inflation -- and asks, "Is it the eighties now or 1929?" Chill Factor is a solid collection of songs that ranks as one of Merle Haggard's most consistent albums.