Somewhere My Love is two albums in one. Half of the songs are Western swing remakes of '40s-'60s pop songs like "Mona Lisa," "Love Letters in the Sand," and "Careless Hands." The album's singles were drawn from this category: the modestly successful title track (from Dr. Zhivago) that became one of
Red Steagall's biggest hits, and
Cole Porter's "True Love" (also a minor chart item). The other half of the album is comprised of
Steagall's originals, which are straight country songs with little foundation in Western swing. "Something Nice and Easy" and "The Hard Times Will Be the Best Times" show a trace of
George Jones creeping into
Steagall's vocal, but the country songs are so different from the swing tracks that one wishes the album had gone entirely in one direction or the other. Turning pop oldies into Western swing seems to have had commercial potential, and
Steagall continued to exploit this formula on occasion throughout his career even though it never yielded spectacular results at the retail level.