Throwback Thursday: Tanya Tucker, ‘Two Sparrows in a Hurricane’

Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly series showcasing an album, single, music video or performance of a bygone era and its personal and/or cultural significance.

The ties of young love can bind you for a lifetime. That’s the narrative Tanya Tucker sews on her smokey 1992 single “Two Sparrows in a Hurricane,” a saccharine but emotional story-song of two young kids who fall in love and then spend their entire lives together. Despite detractors spewing “oh, you’ll never make it,” they defy the odds ⎯⎯ from overcoming early parenthood to living the life they’ve always wanted. “She’s 15, and he’s barely driving a car,” she sets the gripping tale of innocence. “She’s got his ring, and he’s got the keys to her heart…”

Tucker’s plainspoken singing, tightly wound in a gravelly timbre, curls around the notes. Her conviction drips from the words, too, as they unfurl smoothly and intelligently from her lips, just as sweet as the story itself. The cut, lifted from Tucker’s 1992 studio album, titled Can’t Run from Yourself, is flooded with a quiet darkness, seeping into the lonesome tear of guitar and the gradual melodic burn. “It’s just a matter of time,” she avows. “They’ll spread their wings and fly…”

The notion of flying as both what young people must do to gain their independence ⎯⎯ and the final flight we all take on our judgement day ⎯⎯ is heartbreaking, uplifting, moving and mysteriously comforting. “The world says that they’ll never make it but love says they will,” she salutes. The accompanying visual stars both Tucker’s children and her parents, juxtaposing childlike virtues against the passage of time and the accumulation of commitment, wisdom and resolve through her own eyes. “Two Sparrows in a Hurricane” remains one of the most compelling performances in history, and we have songwriter Mark Alan Springer and brawny vocalist Tucker to thank for that.

Watch below:

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