“Deeper Well” might have a few more memorable songs and mark a return to a more organic sound for Musgraves, but that “something’s missing” feeling persists. It seems to be marked by boredom.
In a true procrastinator’s fashion, I have waited until the final dying moments of the year to tackle 2023’s most difficult album to review, and the one that will include some of the most dissenting viewpoints from prevailing sentiments.
“There are the songs of Lori McKenna, and then there are the songs of everyone else in country music. Lori McKenna songs should constitute their own subgenre in the way she’s so deftly captures feelings and sentiments…”
Beginning in the 00’s, songwriting in country music began to change, and by the early 2010’s, the population of country music songwriters had contracted by as much as 90% by some estimates, as the royalties that helped sustain these writers also began to dry up.
“Head Over Boots” is not a great song, but it’s country, and it’s Jon Pardi, and it suits the ears just fine. The key for Pardi and Laird was to put something together that was positive in nature, but still native to Pardi’s sound, and something still traditional enough to delineate Pardi from radio peers. So they headed to the dance halls of Texas for inspiration.
Regardless of how you feel about Kacey Musgraves, her music, her politics, or the ideologies she espouses, she symbolizes nothing short of a victory in the effort to save country music. To have a major label artist release an album like Pageant Material, full of traditional country leanings and songwriter-based material, is a sizable leap forward for the genre.
Despite your desire to see Musgraves become that artist that can deliver a more traditional sound and intelligent scope to country, desire doesn’t always match execution. Criticism for Musgraves as a “boring” live performer is pretty common. And similar to Same Trailer, Different Park, the roll out of the new album so far has been less than smooth.
Prefacing “American Kids”, Kenny Chesney says all of the right things. “There is so much more to being alive than partying, tailgates and bonfires.” Okay, that all sounds good …. And then here comes the song. It still relies heavily on the listing off of artifactual staples daisy chained by buzzwords, while favoring a rhythmic delivery instead of a melodic one.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read that comedian and country music performer Brad Paisley’s new album due out August 26th was called Moonshine in the Truck and “sees Paisley adapting the modern technology of EDM and dubstep to the classic country formula.” “The rulebook’s gone, or was there ever one?” Brad says. “They try, but I don’t play by it.”
In Zac Brown’s recent disparaging comments about Luke Bryan’s hit “That’s My Kind Of Night,” Zac went out of his way to lay as little blame as possible on Luke Bryan. Instead it was the song itself, and its songwriters that drew the brunt of Zac Brown’s ire. Though Zac didn’t name any names, the likely target of Zac’s criticism was country songwriter Dallas Davidson.
Same Trailer, Different Park is the loss of corporate country’s innocence. It is a total flip of perspective from the fare the mainstream country public is used to. It’s an awakening, an awareness of an alternative set of ideas that dash the mores that keep radio country and its listeners locked in suffocating patterns that don’t allow the soul the space for self-exploration and growth.
In Music Row’s everlasting quest to train all of its resources on scouring America to unearth only the finest, most purest form of audio diarrhea, they have struck the mother of all motherloads originating from the unholy bowels of Macon, Georgia’s Jason Aldean. Yes Nashville, pat yourself on the back, you have officially discovered the worst country music song to ever touch the human ear drum.