1. I Can't Win For Losin' You * (4:00) - This slow song opens with chime-like instruments and a steel guitar. The narrator crosses paths again with a former girlfriend. He asks her how she's doing lately, with her new man and all. As for him, he's "still the same, still raisin' Cain," but lately he misses her. "Bein' footlose and fancy free / Ain't all it's cracked up to be," he has learned.
2. Love Don't Care (Whose Heart It Breaks) (3:23) - The tempo is slightly faster than moderate. This time the narrator is the one who got dumped. At first, the woman he loved gave him all the love she had, but over time the relationship turned sour. Now, every time he sees her, the memory of their relationship haunts him. He's right about her being the "sole survivor." When a relationship ends, there's only one parachute; the dumper gets it while the dumpee crashes.
3. Nobody Falls Like A Fool * (3:21) - The tempo is moderately slow. Love may be blind, but only in the sense that "it just sees what it wants to see." Having seen many dreams go up in smoke, the narrator resolves, "it's time that one came true." It will come true if the woman he sings to feels love for him like he does for her.
4. Chance Of Lovin' You (2:53) - This song has a moderate speed. The girl has come "dressed to kill," ready to seduce men into one-night stands. She apparently has had hopes before of long-term relationships, which were dashed, so she has learned to make due with one night per guy. A lonely heart is the price one tends to pay for love. Even so, the narrator would never refuse a chance to love her if it came his way. Just before the second verse, and also during the fading sequence, one of the instruments makes a whirl-like sound.
5. Angel In Disguise (3:53) - This tune, on the slow side of moderate, is one of two songs that inspired me to buy this disc. The narrator thought at first that he and the girl were to have only one night of passion. But her touch has left him starry-eyed, as has her willingness to stay with him for the long haul. This is a nice tune to dance to, touching the ground at every other beat.
6. Don't Make It Easy For Me (3:30) - This moderate-paced tune makes a play on antonyms: "If you wanna play hard to please, don't make it easy for me." Since the narrator is easy to please, he wonders why she can't be. He'd gladly give her his heart if that's what she wants. All he asks is that she make up her mind--either stay with him or leave him alone. The song fades out after just over a minute of instrumental.
7. Holding Her And Loving You * (3:08) - Though this song has a slow feel, especially in the first verse, the measures count at a pace slightly faster than moderate. This is my favorite song by Earl, the other one I heard on the radio long ago. Earl portrays a guy caught in a dilemma. He already has an established relationship with a woman who has stood by him through hard times (whom I'll call the "first woman" for simplicity), but lately he has fallen in love with the woman to whom he sings (the "second woman"). He describes holding the first woman while loving the second as "the hardest thing I've ever had to do." Not only that, in the first verse he describes his third greatest difficulty (leaving the second woman's house without her) and his second greatest (telling the first gal about the second).
8. Your Love's On The Line (3:22) - The tempo is moderate. The narrator sings to another guy, who has never been unfaithful to his woman before but now is tempted to cheat. The urge is so strong that "it's too late to worry what's right or what's wrong." The other woman has the guy's "head in the clouds and [his] heart in a bind."
9. Somewhere Between Right And Wrong (4:07) - This and the next song are the ones that Earl wrote by himself. This fast song includes horns, a piano and a sax among its instruments. Earl's character walks into a bar one night and meets a woman whose significant other has been away from her for so long that lately she's been lonely. She begins an affair with the narrator, telling him, "I can be had, but I can't be bought / And I can be bad if I don't get caught." In the third verse, the narrator is the one having second thoughts about an always-gone lover. So then at the chorus, HE is the one who "can be had" and all that.
10. Fire And Smoke (3:13) - The tempo is a tiny bit slower than moderate. The narrator, having been jilted, goes from bar to bar and town to town to drown away his sadness. The title alludes to the passion that a relationship brings when new; the narrator get his rush from that passion. But over time the flame goes out and rainclouds pour.