Almost Hits: Eagles - Busy Being Fabulous (2008)

Released in 2008, Long Road Out of Eden, the Eagles' final album, is a double CD set. One of its better entries is "Busy Being Fabulous," a song that shows Don Henley to be in typical high quality form.

Henley has always been a master at writing about relationships and also at writing scathing commentary about the Hollywood social scene even though he was a major part of it for a long time. Here, he combines both subjects in one song.

On "Busy Being Fabulous," Henley laments that his lady socializes with her "high-rollin' friends," leaving him home alone with the kids. While she is having a blast now she could be mortgaging her future, and what's important in "the long run" (pun unintended), because she's "too busy being fabulous, too busy to think about us." The famous singing drummer asks her, "Where do you go when the party ends?" Will it be too late to save their relationship when she's ready to settle down?

"Busy Being Fabulous" sounds like a typical Eagles ballad with a top notch melody, lead vocal, and harmony support by Henley's famous mates.

This very nice tune would have easily zoomed into the Top 10, if it had shown up on one of Eagles' 1970s LPs. Unfortunately, it only went to No. 28 on the country chart and No. 12 on the adult contemporary chart, while failing to make the Billboard Hot 100 at all so, it goes down in history as another hit that wasn't.
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Almost Hits is an occasional exploration into songs that failed to reach the top #20 on the American Billboard Hot 100. Many have become classics despite what their chart position would indicate.

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