Even Now

Thirty-four years after his first big record, ”It’s Only Make Believe,” Conway Twitty continues to churn out respectable albums and garner hits. How he manages to stave off his competition comes down to two factors: Twitty knows his audience — mostly older women now — and he knows that it’s the song, not the singer, that matters. In Even Now, he includes two old-style country tunes here, the three-hankie ”Life’s Too Short (No Matter How Long It Lasts),” which sentimentally chronicles the death of dear old Grandpa, and ”Who Did They Think He Was,” a melodramatic ditty about hero worship that manages to link Elvis, John F. Kennedy, and Jesus. On the whole, though, this is a radio-ready collection of winsome love ballads and snappy rhythm tunes like ”She’s Got a Man on Her Mind,” which perfectly evokes the adrenaline rush of falling in love. Twitty has lost a lot of his sense of adventure through the years, but as this album proves, his intuition for the trailer-park set is still right on the money. B-