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.
Farce the Music's Wall of Honor is a showplace for our
well-earned and highly prized Twitter blocks. Today we add a new plaque. This dude has a terrible current bought-and-paid-for hit single and he once brought Chewbacca Mom on the Opry stage with him, so we're happy to add: DYLAN SCOTT!
Back in the olden days when Mr. Johnny Rich here was a studly young country singer and songwriter, the biggest piece of advice I ever got was the hardest one. "You have to write songs better than those you hear on the radio." said the old codgers and biddies. When you're young and dumb and full of shit, you've gotta compete with the big timers, the ballers, the OGs, if you will. Artists and labels are more willing to work with who they know. Those writers who've made it tend to get settled in and lazy and start pumping out hits like a hot dog company pumping lips and ears and ballsacks into their juicy wieners.
That used to be quite a chore. Hell, as a twenty-something, I was competing with the likes of Jim Lauderdale, Charlie Craig, and Don Sampson. It was a trial by fire, my friends. You had to come into the writers' room full of piss and vinegar and pacing like a damn silverback, or you'd get torn to shreds by these bad asses.
Nowadays, I turn on my radio and scratch my head when pondering that old piece of advice. This is a sampling of some of the lyrics I've heard lately: "Ooh she got me like yeah baby girl, you gone and done it again." Alrighty then. And "Dang girl look at you, stopping me in my boots, what's a country boy to do but say uh uh." Look, I'm part of the establishment. I'm "The Man," so I hate to talk bad about another cog in the machine, but let's get real. An ADD riddled 9 year old with a D average could come up with more coherent lyrics than that. I could let my cat walk across a computer keyboard and she'd write better poetry.
So basically what I'm saying is… that old advice is pointless as a bowling ball. If you write songs that are better than the ones on the radio, you're probably not getting anything cut. If you write songs worse than those on the radio, you're not getting enough brain function to put on velcro sneakers. I don't know what to tell you. Be famous. Have a dad in the business. Know people. Or get me a couple of extra ketchup packets for my curly fries.
