Music / Straight from the Heart

I've found the love / To help me ease my troubled mind

25 lbs. of pure cane sugar
In each and every kiss
You wouldn't know what I'm talking about
If you never had lovin' like this

- "99 lbs."

Straight From the Heart is an album by African-American soul singer Ann Peebles released on Hi Records in 1972.

Her third record for Hi Records, it would be the first record where she began to co-write songs with Hi Records house songwriter, Don Bryant, as well as develop her signature Memphis soul sound on this record. It would also yield modest hits in the songs "Slipped, Tripped and Fell in Love", "I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home" and "Somebody's on Your Case".

Tracklist

Side A

1. "Slipped, Tripped and Fell in Love" (2:25)
2. "Trouble, Heartaches & Sadness" (2:37)
3. "What You Laid on Me" (2:22)
4. "How Strong Is a Woman" (2:57)
5. "Somebody's on Your Case" (2:35)

Side B

1. "I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home" (2:28)
2. "I've Been There Before" (3:06)
3. "I Pity the Fool" (2:53)
4. "99 lbs." (2:15)
5. "I Take What I Want" (2:30)

Tropes, Heartaches and Sadness

• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: "I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home" spells this out very clearly:
  Lying around home alone
  On a rainy night like this
  Starving for your love
  Hungry for just one kiss

  Got nowhere to turn
  Tired of being alone
  Feel like breaking up somebody's home
• Anthropomorphic Personification: "Troubles, Heartaches & Sadness" has Peebles send off said issues as if they were former companions:
  Old man trouble
  Stop knockin' at my door
  You used to be a good friend of mine
  But you can't hang around me no more
• Be a Whore to Get Your Man: Alluded to on "Somebody's on Your Case":
  If he come home
  With that same old line
  Telling you he's tired
  From working overtime
  Don't get uptight
  Don't put him out tonight
  What you better do, girl
  Is get your own thing right
• Break Up Song: "I Pity the Fool" has Ann speak to her lover, pitying whoever choses to them and pitying the lover themselves for when their eventual heartbreak comes:
  I pity the fool
  I say I pity the fool
  Whoa, I pity the fool
  I pity that give her heart to you
  She'll take your love away
  Till she find another fool to play
  That's why I pity the fool
• Love Martyr: "What You Laid On Me" has Ann beg her man not to tell her of his cheating because she cannot bear the idea of him giving to another what he "laid on her".
• Silly Love Songs: Several, including "Slipped, Tripped and Fell in Love", "Trouble, Heartaches & Sadness" and "99 lbs."
• Soul: Of the Memphis variety.

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