Album Review – Chase Rice’s – “Go Down Singin'”

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photo: Ben Christensen

#532 (Country pop) on the Country DDS.

As the old saying goes, war makes strange bedfellows. Amid the culture war that runs straight down the middle of country music like a grizzly quadruple bypass scar, the success you might have experienced in country music’s mainstream doesn’t always determine what side you fall on. You can be Chase Rice and have a songwriting credit on Florida Georgia Line’s massive hit “Cruise,” have a couple of hits of your own, and still field a laundry list of legitimate grievances against the system.

On his new album and first independent release called Go Down Singin’, Chase Rice fields not one, but two songs addressing the country mainstream and how it can chew up and spit out performers like Rice when it’s through with them. Perhaps he shouldn’t complain too loudly since the mailbox money from “Cruise” alone probably makes for a handsome passive income. Compared to some others, Chase Rice is a huge success story.

Go Down Singin’ is like a continuation and a sister album to Chase’s 2023 release I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell. They both come in the wake of his father’s death, with his dad adorning the previous album cover, and Chase in a similar pose holding Coors beers gracing this one. This also dovetails with the final song on the album, “You in ’85,” where Chase draws similarities with his pops and himself across a span of 40 years.

Clearly the death of his father inspired a dramatic recalibration of priorities for Chase, and that is reflected in the songs of this album. It’s definitely more mature and meaningful than his earlier stuff, just like his last album was, but might even go a step further here. Lori McKenna gets four songwriting credits on the album, and appears in the duet “That Word Don’t Work No More.” This alone should tell you how seriously Chase Rice took the songwriting for this record.

One of those Lori McKenna co-writes is the song “Oh Tennessee” that finds Chase Rice lamenting his time in the state (and by proxy, mainstream country), and how it transformed him from a simple country boy to someone he wasn’t particularly proud of. The rootsy song “Haw River” is about a preacher gone bad, and certainly not something you’re used to hearing from the mainstream country set.


But as much as Chase Rice deserves legitimate praise for the 180° transformational direction in his career, it’s only fair to characterize this album as still coming with many of the modes and inflections indicative of mainstream country. Every song has a co-writer, or two. The songs “Numbers” and “If Drinkin’ Helped” still rely heavily on list-like lyricism. “Hey God It’s Me Again” is a quality track, but one you’ve heard a dozen different ways on major label releases.

“Arkansas” sounds like Chase Rice trying to write a Zach Bryan song trying to write a Turnpike Troubadours song. Though you commend Chase for his efforts, at some point the listener is better served going straight to the source. Like much of mainstream content, you see the plot twists coming, and sometimes you can finish the lines before they’re issued. It’s that predictability that makes mainstream country a measure less even in its greatest iterations, which Chase Rice certainly challenges for here.

Something else holding this album back is how the music fails to make a statement. No question that it’s much more country than Chase Rice 1.0. There are some cool moments in the music, like the extended guitar solo at the end of “If Drinkin’ Helped.” But it’s certainly not a twangy record, and presents a sort of “neither fish nor foul” aspect to it where it sits in between the mainstream and independent in a way that may not appeal strongly to either side.

But don’t allow any of these critiques to make you question what your ears are hearing here, which is a dramatic transformation from the original Chase Rice experience. Similar to new albums from Shawna Thompson and Miranda Lambert’s latest, mainstream artists are getting fed up, and are envious of the creative autonomy of their independent peers. Chase Rice isn’t copycatting, he’s just trying to etch out a space in music where he can be himself. That’s hard to not root for and champion, even if it’s not particularly your speed.

7.2/10

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