He’s just the best at his job. Brad’s album Love and War is full of reliable tunes, at least four of which are potential Songs of the Year. This isn’t one of them, but it is his current single at radio. After Today (which is one of them), he takes the theme ‘what can’t we do anymore?’ and wraps a lovely melody around it. Notable in the arrangement is the sound of the snare drum, which thwacks away on beats 2 and 4, and the way the fellow male voices wrap around Brad’s.
The chorus goes ‘Last call, last chance/ Last song, last dance’, which is pretty anthemic. Of the ‘everythings’ Brad laments the last time of doing is cutting off a mullet, hearing Little Jimmy Dickens at the Opry and Prince singing Purple Rai-iiiin, using a fake ID, introducing your ‘fiancee’ rather than your wife (or ex-fiancee if the wedding doesn’t take place…There’s a song in that, Brad) and eating ‘biscuits and gravy at your momma’s house’.
Like Brad’s best tunes it’s about time, moments and life. Brad and his mates in the writer’s room have a knack of melding the familiar and the abstract. There really has been nobody better (and I include the likes of Shane McAnally and Brandy Clark here) at boiling down the human condition in a country tune that you can hum and boogie to.
8 out of 10
Brad Paisley is a douchebag.
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