Lady Antebellum, “Love Don’t Live Here”
Monday, January 21st, 2008
Who doesn’t enjoy a calmly collected kiss-off number? Sure, it doesn’t have the emotional intensity of a tortured Dwight Yoakam record, but there’s something to be said for showing someone the door in a coldly detached way. There are a few too many lines I’ve heard too many times before, particularly the suggestion to lie in the bed you’ve made, and the song’s mood changes abruptly at the end, when the singer suddenly starts growling the title. But overall, this is pretty good.
Written by David Haywood, Charles Kelley & Hillary Scott
Grade: B
Listen: Love Don’t Live Here
Buy: Love Don’t Live Here
Category Single Reviews
Tags: Lady Antebellum
Is it just me, or is this very, very loud? I had to turn the volume down to give it a fair listen. I may already be too old (or too mild-mannered) to be the target audience for this, but I can respect it from a distance. Heck, I actually like it.
I would’ve like a bit more edge to this, to bring more of the defiance in the lyric to the surface. That said, Nichols does well enough delivering this country boy’s slacker anthem. More people do mind to own their business, so it’s easy to sympathize with him here.
Equal parts Travis Tritt and Conway Twitty, Otto’s latest single is a smooth but not sappy romantic ballad. It’s a sound that Josh Turner had a heck of a lot of success with when he topped the charts with “Your Man”, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Otto finally gets some traction with this performance. He’s not exactly reinventing the wheel, but he sounds comfortable and self-assured.
One of the great success stories of 2007 was the massively popular Eagles album Long Road Out of Eden. In the seventeen years since their previous studio album, country music essentially adopted their California rock sound. In a weird way, listening to “Busy Being Fabulous” made me think to myself, “Oh. This is what Rascal Flatts is trying to do, but they keep messing it up.”
An unassuming morality yarn. The Bellamys’ trademark low-key delivery make this laundry list of good drug problems easily palatable. See, he was drug to church on Sunday morning, drug to family reunions, drug to the woodshed when he misbehaved. If all kids had “drug problems” like that, the world would be a better place, right?
Flawless.
I like the lyric. Like it quite a bit, actually. It doesn’t sound like a country record to me, though. I’m not a purist by any means, but I literally don’t hear anything that sounds remotely like country music here. Sounds more like Adult Top 40.
He’s simply a better singer now. Like “Fall” before it, the material isn’t significantly different than his string of hits in the nineties. He’s just singing it better. There’s a seasoning that comes only with time. “She Likes it in the Morning” is executed far too well to be dismissed as radio filler, and Walker’s performance is what makes it work.
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