Album Review – Joe Nichols – “Good Day For Living”

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photo: Joseph Llanes

Joe Nichols is like your favorite football team. You’re gonna root for them no matter what, because in the past, they’ve conferred so much joy to you that they’ve earned that loyalty. But dammit if they won’t let you down as they string some bad games together and break your heart. And right about the time you’re ready to give up on them entirely, lo and behold, they rip off a bunch of wins and reel you right back in. So goes this new Joe Nichols album.

Good Day For Living is undeniably country. The songs are centered squarely around country themes. There is ample steel guitar, and twang in Joe Nichols’ voice. He’s a great singer of course, reminding you of Merle Haggard in the way certain inflections come through in the music. And there’s a good balance of fun weekend songs, along with some more sincere touching songs on the album.

But if you feel a “but” coming on, it’s because much of the songwriting of this album is so incredibly list-tastic (“beer,” “truck,” “backroad,” et al.), it’s just hard to listen through and hold onto your dignity here in 2022. It is the ultimate distraction and foil of an otherwise decent Joe Nichols album.

One could accuse Joe Nichols of chasing the Bro-Country trend with this song selection, but that’s not really what’s going on here. If anything, the songwriting feels dated. Bro-Country has already been on the outs even with mainstream listeners for a few years, some notable exceptions notwithstanding. But really, what the songs of Good Day For Living hearken back to is the era right before the more hip-hop-oriented Bro-Country took over in full, where most every radio single was a “laundry list” or “checklist” song as we called them at the time.

Take the first song of the album, “Brokenhearted.” It purports to be a lament about how there are no more sad songs in country anymore to nurse a broken heart. But along with its upbeat rhythm and attitude, it’s just a listy/Bro-Country song in disguise,

Everybody’s hookin’ up, gettin’ down, tearin’ up their little town
Loadin’ up their cooler, and they’re headin’ south, beach bound
Workin’ on their tan, coozie on a beer can
Party every night, throwin’ up their hands

It’s got all those “cooler,” “coozie,” “beer can,” “beach,” “tan,” “little town” buzzwords shoehorned in there just like all of those vapid early Bro-Country songs. In fact, one of the trends that marked the Bro-Country era were songs that also tried to mock the sameness of country lyricism at the time, while still trying to appeal to that style. Think of Maddie & Tae’s “Girl in a Country Song.”

This carries through to the album’s big single called “Home Run.” Though it hits well on the double entendre, the listy lyrics like, “Need to drive, through the pines. See my boys, wet a line. And drink a beer on the edge of town” weigh it down, as does the other issue with this album—the occasional presence of electronic drum beats and other contemporary production that undermines the otherwise cohesive country sound.

These concerns are also carried through to other tracks like “I Got Friends That Do” with Blake Shelton, and “Screened In,” which both sound very country, but have electronic beats underpinning phrases (including one when Nichols is singing about listening to old school country), while the lyricism relies once again on buzzy lists as opposed to more poetic or witty writing. Even some of the songs that try to hit a more heartfelt pitch such as “That’s How I Grew Up” is still just a skeleton for phrases like, “I grew up in the back seat on a back road,” that are so incredibly trite at this point.

You can’t deny the entertainment value these kinds of songs have for some, or that they’re country. But for many others, this list style of writing just wore out its welcome many years ago, which is unfortunate because utilized in more sparing frequency, can be very effective. Bro-Country just blew out that capacity, and probably for decades.

Good Day For Living is hard to get through if you’re a fan of all those early Joe Nichols records, even though “Dance With The Girl” is pretty decent, and so is the title track. The hackneyed attempt at a double entendre on the ninth song of the 13-song album “Reckon” is where you want to bail entirely, but wouldn’t you know that right when you’re ready to renounce your Joe Nichols fandom forevermore, the final few songs remind you of why you were a fan of Joe Nichols in the first place.

Despite the digital beats in moments, “Why Can’t She” is probably the best written song of the set, and one of the best from Joe Nichols in a good while. This is chased by “One Two Step Closer,” which is vintage country gold, and vintage Joe Nichols. You can even forgive “Hawaii On Me,” which is the beach song every mainstream record is apparently mandated to contain, but delivers the otherwise tired theme with a twist, and a lot of emotion. Then Nichols ends the album on a high note with “She Was.”

You’re almost mad that the final four songs of this album are so good, not just because it would have been better if they were interspersed throughout the record or replaced some of the worse tracks, but because they mean you can’t give up on Joe Nichols entirely, despite the cheesy efforts that comprise the lion’s share of this record.

Gone are the days of Joe Nichols dropping in songs from folks like Iris Dement, Tom T. Hall, Bill Anderson, and Blaze Foley, along with co-writing a song or two for an album himself. As we have seen with other artists who hit it big in the aughts and are trying to rekindle that commercial magic like Gary Allan, Joe Nichols is just trying too hard to get back into the good graces of radio as opposed to being himself, while radio is ignoring him as well, resulting in the worst of both worlds.

But Good Day For Living is not a total waste. And those nostalgic for the style of country in 2010 before Bro-Country completely took over will find favor with the relative country-ness of the tracks.

5/10

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