True Love (1990)

Williams was the Country Music Association's Male Vocalist of the Year in 1978. But since then his records have become increasingly predictable. Most of them are made up of a handful of sentimental tunes by veteran Nashville songwriter Bob McDill and a couple of medium-tempo rhythm numbers. All the songs are laced with a country-folk backing and designed to fit Williams' persona as a sensitive family man, working to keep the romance in his marriage. In True Love he breaks out of the mold only with Craig Bickhardt's ''Donald and June,'' a sweet, poignant look at a middle-class couple and how life hardly turned out as they'd planned. C+