Song Review – Lady Antebellum’s “You Look Good”
Apologies to any die hard Lady Antebellum fans out there, but I just don’t see the value of them coming back from their extended hiatus. From the beginning, Lady Antebellum has felt so forgettable, so superfluous, so fleeting of impact and falling short of any serious contribution to country music or popular music in general, would anybody really miss them if they never reunited aside from a few soccer moms who like them on low while sipping Chablis in a bubble bath?
At least the little side projects from Charles Kelley and Hillary Scott (especially) during the Lady Antebellum hiatus resulted in something that seemed to mean something to themselves if nobody else. Though it’s easy to pin the accusation of “manufactured” on most any mainstream country artist or band, with Lady Antebellum, it sticks. From the revelation a few years ago that the trio needed a mediator early on to learn how to communicate with each other, to Charles Kelley saying recently that the band’s time off was the result of them feeling “fatigue” from radio and listeners, this thing has felt more like when your social studies teacher forces you to be in a group project as opposed to an organic and inspired expression of music that sprung forth of creative spontaneity like most bands worth their salt. “There was not a lot of excitement for new singles,” Charles Kelley says. “It was kind of like, ‘Oh yeah, Lady Antebellum.'”
Yeah, no shit. So maybe go out there and write and perform something that people will remember; something more than the equivalent of the frappy stuff on the top of your Starbucks drink. It’s so incredibly indicative of the Music Row state of mind to say, “Gee guys, these singles aren’t selling. Let’s take two years off, then release the same exact crud we always have, and see if that solves the problem” instead of actually writing and recording better songs, looking long and hard at what you’re serving the public, and seeing where the trends are going, which is away from bands like Lady Antebellum. Instead what we get with their first single in nearly two years is the same fleeting, frappy, forgettable empty calories of another throwaway Lady Antebellum song.
“On a boat, on a beach, in the water, in the sand, in the back of the bar, cold beer in your hand,” drones Lady Antebellum’s “You Look Good” at the start, and you can probably guess where it goes from there. It’s boring music for bored people looking for a quick fix of three-minute escapism and that’s about it. The group also makes the daring move of rhyming “body” with “body,” and mentioning moving to the bass, and Hollywood. Sounds deep, huh?
To Lady Antebellum’s credit, this song accredited to Hillary Lindsey, Ryan Hurd, and the seeming ubiquitous and uncapitalized “busbee” who also produced the track, does not have you running away screaming while clasping your ears like the latest monstrosity from Sam Hunt or something. Thank God they at least spared us the electronic drum beats and laser canon synth textures, but even a horn section can’t help pull the sub-par writing of this song to a passing grade. Where are all those seething Sturgill Simpson fans who hate horns in country? Someone sick them on this posthaste.
Even the lyric video for “You Look Good” feels like someone else’s idea overlayed on a Lady Antebellum effort, in this case Taylor Swift and the now dozens of others who’ve taken the Polaroid camera motif and tried to make it into an element of organic performance art. As bad as “You Look Good” is, it’s frankly hard to get too angry over, or even to get too exercised about Lady Antebellum themselves because even though they’re decidedly not good and certainly not country, they’re so incredibly vapid and unoffensive, they don’t even inspire strong feelings in opposition.
So yeah, Lady Antebellum is back. It will be interesting to see if anyone notices. For my money, I’d rather give my attention to The Kinks’ “Wicked Annabella.” It’s a hot lick.
January 30, 2017 @ 10:05 am
I think there is immense talent there but there “back from hiatus” song is lame. For me what Charles did in his own was way above this silly song.
January 30, 2017 @ 10:17 am
Those Lady Antebellum solo projects proved these people have talent. That’s what makes this song even more disappointing.
January 30, 2017 @ 10:07 am
Besides the realization that I won’t get back the three minutes spent watching it, the only thing I took away from the video/song was that the undeveloped photo at the beginning is perfectly symbolic for the band that has yet to develop. Doubt that was the intention behind it though.
And I was kinda hoping the beach/sand – drink in my hand fascination was dying off. Perhaps they just havent gotten that memo during their hiatus.
February 28, 2017 @ 8:40 pm
Perhaps you’re a jealous douche, why should anyone care what you have to say??? Seriously you probably have no musical knowledge or talent. You people all think you know what you’re talking about, but guess what… They’re making music for a lot of money still and have another single on the radio every day, while you are on here posting comments that they’ll never read because you are nobody’s. Too bad I can’t get back the 5 seconds I wasted reading your hater-ish comment.
January 30, 2017 @ 10:22 am
Yeah I listened to this song last week and I wasn’t impressed. Not Country and really not any good. Really looking forward to you hammering on Sam Hunts new song ‘Body like a Backroad’ really don’t even need to listen to this one to know how bad it’s going to be.
January 30, 2017 @ 10:37 am
I like exactly two Lady Antebellum songs: their first single “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”, and “Hello World” from 2010. Sometimes I can stand “Dancing Away With My Heart.” Otherwise, this bands generic fluff has always struck me as SO vanilla that it IS offensive. “Need You Now” was so omnipresent that I just got sick of them, and that was around the time I began to completely give up on the radio. I hadn’t even wondered what happened to them until I read this article; the solo projects were equally as ignorable, if you ask me. I was baffled when I looked them up and realized that their last album was released way back in 2014.
And I know it was to make a point, but I can’t help but nitpick: nobody cares about horns in a song by Lady A because they weren’t worth much of a damn to begin with. Not to mention that they aren’t being billed as any sort of saviors or alternative to the mainstream. Context is everything…
January 30, 2017 @ 10:40 am
I offered up my Lady A thoughts several posts back so I won’t repeat them here.
I WILL say that when a group gets all of the attention and sales that this one had early on in their ‘career’ , they get MANY MANY more ” first cracks” at the songs being pitched by the best writers . Its obvious by all of their recent releases that Lady A and its handlers wouldn’t know and couldn’t make a good song choice to save their ( musical ) lives .THIS always baffles me about ” emporer’s- new- clothes ” acts like Lady A , Band Perry , Jana Kramer and so many others . Its almost like no one within their orbit wants to say what everyone OUTSIDE their orbit knows only too well . These acts desperately need someone to step in and address their painfully non- descript lack of taste and direction when it comes to their sense of musical ‘ fashion’ . When you are neither traditional nor trendy you have troubles .
January 30, 2017 @ 11:00 am
Are these mainstream groups even being pitched good music though. I don’t have any clue what’s going on behind the scenes but it seems like everything is the same. If that’s the case, you pick one crappy song out of the pile of 10 crappy songs and hope it’s produced in a way that will appeal to the mainstream radio listeners. If they do get a choice of a diverse set of songs with some higher quality material, then your correct and they definitely need someone else to guide them along.
January 30, 2017 @ 11:58 am
Travis …If you are trying to make a living as an ‘artist’ in the music industry and don’t know a good song from a bad song perhaps you have chosen the wrong career path . There’s no excuse , with so much access to great music for ‘ established’ performers to be recording mediocre songs unless those performers are clueless or too lazy or stubborn to look elsewhere for their material . This band seems , in fact , to be clueless . There are many many radio acts who release mindless material to the masses but , in fact, put some incredibly good songs on their albums . Shame on them on the first count …but kudos that they seem to have some idea of what a good song is , in fact …or at least have the right people in place to guide them that way and are listening . I can’t recall this being the case with Lady A . Singles , album tracks , concerts and shows …all of it seems to have a blandness ….a ”safeness” that would not merit calling themselves ‘artists’ in any sense of the word.
January 30, 2017 @ 10:45 am
Lady A was booked at our small County Fair . They had some success before the gig and backed out. . Guess they showed us!
January 30, 2017 @ 11:48 am
Money is the answer to pretty much every question you ask. Love him or hate, like Dallas Davidson said, I’m not trying to make music you like, I’m writing music that makes me money…..and that is all Lady A is an attempt to do. Charles knows that’s not real music. He and his brother are smart dudes.
January 30, 2017 @ 8:43 pm
Yeah ….DD has made money because he’s found artists and listeners gullible and foolish enough to purchase his ‘wares’ . And that’s just free enterprise , of course . And its also that VERY bottom-line approach to marketing music that creates sites like SCM as an effort to , hopefully , enlighten interested folks as to the options . And those options are PLENTY , as frequent readers here are quite aware . Hey ….when you’re 7 years old , your musical tastes are far different than when you are 15 years old . And when you are 22 years old they will be more mature tastes again unless you’ve stopped growing as a listener and are still settling for what you listened to when you were 15 . Country radio is doing its damndest to ensure that that’s exactly what you are doing ….settling for junky, thoughtless , mind-numbing product that does not have the capacity to engage , inspire ,or reflect anything of substance to a mature listener /person . Unfortunately , its been far more successful at it than is healthy for listeners OR the business in the long run .
January 31, 2017 @ 5:14 am
Dallas didn’t just find “foolish” listeners, all of radio has….. And they are called the American people. While those of us on stes like this agree with your synopsis, 99% of daily radio music listeners wouldn’t even take the time to look for such. A lot of comparisons have been made between bro country and the hair metal era. Yet what do you still hear on rock stations every day 30 years later? The answer is a lot of the bands and artist that were on the radio in that era.
January 31, 2017 @ 10:17 am
”Yet what do you still hear on rock stations every day 30 years later? The answer is a lot of the bands and artist that were on the radio in that era. ”
Great point Big Cat . Radio is still milking these 30-40 year old songs and artists and listeners don’t seem to care or even notice …a great example of radio and the ‘ market ‘ trying to keep us all in some kind of time warp . I’m not saying that a lot of the music wasn’t really great BUT wtf ….day in and day out ? for nearly 40 years and counting ? For me , they’ve stolen every ounce of nostalgia from these songs just because they can sell airtime to sponsors with them. How mundane a musical existence do folks want their listening lives to be ?
January 31, 2017 @ 10:51 am
Yup but I think you gotta take it one step further than just blaming radio….its the lazy, easy to listen to party music and ballads that the masses want to hear. That’s my point with country today and the hair band era. If you really think about it, there is not much difference between say Jason Aldean and Bon Jovi (talent maybe but musically speaking). Sure lyrically they change it up now to fit in tailgates, beer and chewing tobacco so they can call it country and shove it down peoples throats but musically speaking its really no different. Simply put easy ear worm music is what sells. Country is just the latest platform of what has been going on for a long long time.
January 30, 2017 @ 12:11 pm
By any chance, will you do a review/rant on Sam Hunt’s Drinkin’ Too Much? I think it has worst-song-of-the-year potential not just for country music, but also for all genres of music.
January 30, 2017 @ 12:56 pm
May keep my powder dry for hunt’s “Body Like a Back Road” that’s being released on Wednesday.
January 30, 2017 @ 1:36 pm
I love this song a lot. I love the vocal chemistry between Hillary and Charles, I also really love the horns. It’s not country, but with me I never judge based on genre lines. If I enjoy the song I’ll give it a positive review.
Overall I am thinking a 9 out of 10. This might be my biggest guilty pleasure, but I have always connected with Lady Antebellum.
January 30, 2017 @ 1:56 pm
They lost me at “Lady Antebellum.”
January 30, 2017 @ 2:02 pm
I watched CMT Top 20 for around 3 minutes or so this weekend. Long enough to hear Charles compare their horns to Johnny Cash’s horns..Click went the remote..
January 30, 2017 @ 2:11 pm
Um, nobody drinks chablis anymore. Other than that, I agree with everything you said.
January 30, 2017 @ 4:18 pm
I’m pretty sure those are synth horns, not real brass, listen to the modulation at the end of the lines.
January 30, 2017 @ 4:27 pm
I just barfed in my mouth a little…
January 30, 2017 @ 4:35 pm
why not just go out and buy a real rap record, than listen to 3 washed up white losers pretending? who dat dere with the shades? feelin’ fresh HOL UP? are you kiddin me lol
January 30, 2017 @ 6:59 pm
Billboard actually has multiple Latin charts:
http://www.billboard.com/charts#id-chart-category-latin
January 30, 2017 @ 6:23 pm
Hey, it could be worse. I used to work in Evans, GA. Just a few blocks from Lady A Amphitheater.
January 30, 2017 @ 9:35 pm
I was at Faster Horses in Michigan this past summer and these guys somehow had Alan Jackson playing before them. After hearing this I am glad I joined half the audience in leaving after Alan Jackson finished his amazing set.
January 31, 2017 @ 8:57 am
Boy, is this world bass-ackwards or what!
February 1, 2017 @ 12:21 am
AJ probably didn’t want to have to listen to them so he played first and got the hell outa there .
January 31, 2017 @ 7:05 pm
“On a boat, on a beach, in the water, in the sand, in the back of the bar, cold beer in your hand,” drones Lady Antebellum’s “You Look Good”
Apparently some country artists don’t think very highly of their fan’s intelligence or ambitions. The beach, a bar, sand, a beer…blah blah blah stupid escapist fantasy yadda yadda yadda. Great! Toss some poured-on jeans and a couple of sugar-shakers in there and 30,000 drunken fans will show up to watch you play a baseball stadium (and 15K of them will actually make it into the concert). It’s so banal and trite, what I wouldn’t give to hear a country-pop tune about going camping or white-water rafting or going to Vegas or something.
January 31, 2017 @ 9:27 pm
I guess if you can’t sound good, you might as well look good.
Oh yeah, Lady Antebellum.
February 4, 2017 @ 11:08 am
Why the fuck you gave a good song a bad review?
You don’t even know how good country is today
June 13, 2017 @ 9:13 am
I find myself listening to acts from the 50s 60s 70s and 80s. That was country. Not today’s country. A good song to me is if you feel what the singer is singing and it mesmorizes you. Old style country does that for me. Even the electric guitars had a beat to it that said country. This pop sound of country sucks big time
June 19, 2017 @ 3:37 pm
“Country” music is dead. Failed pop acts have hijacked country music. It’s over.
July 14, 2017 @ 10:36 am
This indefensible song should have been released on the pop charts NOT the country charts. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING remotely country about this song. NOTHING! Period, end of story.