by Jonny Brick
What do these songs have in common: “Every
Time I Hear That Song”; “Do I Make You Wanna”; “They Don’t Know”; “What the
Hell Did I Say?”
They are all the fourth single released
from a major star’s album which this year is getting vast radio play. The fifth
single from Ripcord, “The Fighter,” will be number one soon for Keith Urban.
Luke Bryan had six number ones from Kill the Lights. This seems too many, but
these voices sell cars and whatever other commercials you guys have over there.
(I remain English, and thus get my country digitally without adverts.)
Thanks to their relatively quick climbs up
the charts, bigger acts like Blake, Billy, Jason and Dierks can cram in more
singles per album cycle that they send to radio. After a song which could be
called “Drunk on a Boat,” a duet with Elle King, and a ballad about his wife,
not to mention a duet with Cole Swindell, Dierks has sent a ploddy song to
radio.
Written by Ross Copperman, Josh Kear, and
Chris Tompkins before they wrote a better one later in the session, this is
typical Dierks. The plot of the song is that poor rich. He drunk-dialled his
lady and attracted her greatly with an answerphone message. Did he ‘say we’d go
shoppin’ or ‘go to Vegas and get married by Elvis’? The idea is funny, the
execution is good but there are problems here.
Dierks wonders whether he
(grammatically-incorrectly) sought to ‘Louis Vuitton her’ or ‘Rodeo Drive her,
slide a Tiffany diamond on her’? Singing nouns in place of verbs is an
irritating trope of contemporary country. It almost makes me Second Amendment
someone. As for the product placement, I’ll bank account the writers. It’s
almost as if words don’t matter on the radio…
The singalong bit comes when Dierks can’t
remember what the hell did he, hell did he, hell did he say. Even Bobby Bones
recoils at the blasphemy, asking his audio producer to bleep out the offensive
word in a mock-serious segment.
The song continues the current Nashville
trend of namechecking a non-country song or act when Dierks mentioned that the
folk in the bar are singing along to Free Bird. He could even sing some of it
onstage when he plays this one on tour; it must be getting a single release
because out on the road it gets a big response. There are worse songs on the
radio after all, and some aren’t even by Dylan Scott.
The production is very muddy and overloaded
on the track, which can be a pro as well as a con, and in particular the solo
in the middle of the track is good. Fun fact: credited on
one of the three acoustic guitars in the song is one Charlie Worsham, whose
recent album contained songs much better than this. Yet radio will go with this
until it hits number one some time around Halloween.
6/10
No comments:
Post a Comment