A couple yearning to rekindle the fire in their relationship? Classic country. One asking the other if he/she remembers the old passion and the other chiming in “remind me”? That’s pretty good, too – and genuinely sexy in a way neither Brad Paisley nor Carrie Underwood has ever been on record. There’s no doubt that this single was loaded with potential.
So why doesn’t it feel like the big event it should be?
Mostly because it’s trying too hard to be a big event. Paisley crowds out “Remind Me” with guitar licks and drums, and he and Underwood wail up a storm as it progresses, both sounding technically better than ever but obliterating the song’s smoldering sensuality. They’ve mistaken an “I Need You” for a “Don’t You Wanna Stay.”
There are a few of your typical too-cute Paisley details as well, like an underwhelming second-verse story and the use of “made out” in a song that doesn’t warrant such lyrical smirks.
The core components are still appealing enough, mind. But a little revision – and re-envisioning – might have made the difference between a pleasant summer hit and a career moment.
I’m not sure if this song really constitutes as a “story”song, but its metaphor is so beautifully written that it feels as rich as the best country songs in this category. Regret is a funny thing; sometimes it’s easier to succumb to it than it is to own and embrace your memories – fleeting though they may be. Brooks takes this somewhat tried and true theme and spins it into a poignant, lovely tribute.
This may be more “progressive scenario” than “story,” but either way I can’t get enough of the theme. It’s about seeing someone you love suffer and realizing that, despite your best intentions, there’s nothing you can do to fix or even understand their particular pain. No man is an island, the saying goes, but on a certain level we’re fundamentally disconnected from each other’s experiences, limited as we are to our own. You can tell this couple communicate as authentically as they can, but he can’t fully inhabit her hurt, and she can’t fully know the depth of his caring. The best they can do – tonight, at least – is spend their respective alonenesses together.
Here for the Party came out when I was fourteen and just getting really into country music, and it was so much fresher than most of the mainstream stuff at the time that it instantly became one of my favorite albums. “Homewrecker” wasn’t my favorite on the set (that was “Chariot,” which still sounds cool), but I did find it amazingly clever and funny in a way I couldn’t once I had gotten properly acquainted with Loretta Lynn.
I thought this was the greatest song ever in elementary school, and I think I may have even concocted a dance to it with my childhood best friend. At that time, its vague, grandiose proclamations didn’t really phase me; now they leave me a little cold, though I suppose I’ll always enjoy it on some level.
In the last couple weeks, I’ve actually been weeding out songs from my iTunes, which has turned out to be over 10 gigs of music that I’ve decided I don’t feel I need to listen to anymore. It’s been surprising how many songs I’ve decided I’m totally over—whether it was due to over saturation (my fault since I don’t listen to radio) or change in taste over time. I used to absolutely adore “Check Yes or No”, but now it feels like a song that I’d obliterate if I was to review it. I remember thinking it was a cute story, but now I think it’s schmaltzy and predictable. My poor cynical heart.
When this song was making its chart run, I didn’t like it at all. Apparently, my ears were clogged then. About three years ago, I suddenly realized that I loved it. How couldn’t I love it, especially with Randy Kohrs’ riveting slide guitar action?
Dan Milliken: “Bass Down Low” – DEV featuring the Cataracs
When I first heard this recent hit, I thought it was the filler-iest of Top 40 filler. It may still actually be. But like Napoleon Dynamite gained comic value from the quoting craze it inspired, “Bass Down Low” has gained guilty-pleasure value for me from the way the hook sneaks into my head at times when I’m standing around doing nothing. Repetition works wonders.
I found it completely inane the first two or three times I heard it…and then, just like that, I couldn’t get enough. I still love the song to this day; there’s something strangely majestic about it.
My dad played this song on the jukebox incessantly, driving me crazy every time I heard it. Now it’s a song that I treasure, understanding how him being in the navy helped make it more relevant to him. Plus it’s catchy as all get out.
But it should be beneath the stature of a legend like George Strait. His talent helped him pull of “Write This Down” and “Don’t Make Me Come Over There and Love You”, but there was no saving this one.
Anyone who has read this blog for any amount of time likely knows about my love for Vince Gill’s music and even his character. I don’t, however, love every song that he sings, which is probably why I don’t understand those super fans who love every song that their favorite artists sing. That’s certainly not the case for me.
Vince has some album tracks that I don’t like, but one single in particular that has never sat well with me is “Pretty Little Adriana.” The melody is plodding, but my bigger problem is that Vince has said that it was inspired by a missing child by the name of Adriana, but the lyrics sound like an intimately longing love song. And even if it was only very loosely inspired by a child (as fictional license might allow), I still don’t like “little” to be applied to a woman, as in “the little woman,” or in this case, “Pretty little Adriana.”
About him sitting on the couch and calling Nicole a half-hour after she’s left for the airport ‘cause he just loves her sOooOoOoOO much. Jack Johnson would gag.
A preface for the Scottyfolk: I didn’t watch this season of American Idol, so this single is my first exposure to its winner – no backstory, no jilted favorite of mine he beat. The only metric I’m using is whether “I Love You This Big” sounds like something I’d want to hear on the radio between “Teenage Daughters” and “Amen.”
Here’s my verdict: No.
But it’s an understanding “No,” mostly because this is an American Idol victory single, and only two out of ten of those have been at all decent (Fantasia’s and David Cook’s; if you disagree, I Don’t-Care This Big). McCreery’s bid has all the trappings of its forerunners: generic production, obvious overdubs and Auto-Tune to create a synthetically “perfect” performance, awful Eureka!-moment key change, lyrics so cheesy Michael Bolton gagged (though Rascal Flatts still bobbed their heads along contentedly).
But the song isn’t a great deal worse than the 90′s schmaltz it models itself after, and at least it doesn’t end with the Jesus reference I was expecting from the title (which would have been a shameless rip-off of Jimmy Wayne’s sappy-sweet “I Love You This Much”). For his part, McCreery just sounds like Josh Turner’s young, starry-eyed demo singer who also sometimes rubs his signed copy of John Michael Montgomery’s Greatest Hits like a rabbit’s foot the morning of a big trig test. He’s got a few nice moments of tone and phrasing, and the rest just says, “I haven’t found my own voice yet.”
And that’s fine. I imagine he wasn’t challenged on the Turnerisms on Idol because no one there knew enough to do so – but country fans and radio will call him out. I’m sure the label’s already figuring out how to broach the subject once he’s in the studio. That’s not to say he won’t keep sounding like his heroes, but it should get better. We may find he’s an interesting singer in his own right after a spotty album or two. Hard to say.
In the meantime, I’ll just anticipate the necessary change-of-station at the end of “Teenage Daughters,” breathe, and let the world turn as it will.
He was one of the first country artists I got into, but I’ve developed a sourness for Paisley over the years. With each successive album, his songwriting voice has tended to sound a little more self-impressed and a little less self-aware. “Ticks” is a nice exception to my ears, though. For once, Paisley seems to get that he’s playing the machismo creep, so a listener can take perverse pleasure in listening to him be creepy rather than balk at the fact that they’re expected to sympathize with him. It helps that it’s one of his cooler-sounding singles, too.
This song is a perfect match for the typically annoying (and off key) vulnerable quality to her voice. And we all know I’m a sucker for a well-executed, wistful love song.
Maybe it’s because the Garth Brooks songs that annoy me the most are the ones where he tries to sing like Joel, or maybe it’s just that too many of his hits made the family mix tapes that made car rides a living hell. Either way, the man’s music has not worn well on my ears over the years. I love “My Life,’ though. It’s a philosophy I can really get behind, and it has that perfect balance of emotional detachment and simmering contempt.
There are exactly five songs that I enjoy by Rascal Flatts. Yes, “God Bless the Broken Road” is one of them, but “What Hurts the Most”, in all its sappy glory, is my favorite of them.
There might be a song that technically describes me better than this one, but this is the song that perfectly describes how I feel each morning before I start my day. I don’t know why, but I relate to it on a guttural level.
Her heart has grown cold, her love stored away. But she hungers to feel that love again, and wanders the world in search of things to rekindle it, even as she knows that some types of peace can only come from within. Now she’s anticipating another season of dragging herself through the doldrums, her feelings ever unsettled; but she still holds onto some kind of faith, some hope for tomorrow. All she wants is a good reboot, another chance to set her course a little righter. “Just get me through December,” she pleads, “so I can start again.”
As most of you know by now, I connect with music via melody and vocal performance more so than via lyric. Though I’ve yet to identify with the story of this song, the first time I heard it, I remember thinking it immediately felt like “home” – like I had found an extension of myself in the song. it just…fits me.
Look, here’s the thing. It started out as a joke. I was laughing at it. I swear. Then I started singing it to myself more often than I care to admit…until now.
I have plenty of guilty pleasures, but my guiltiest guilty pleasure stands ahead of the rest. In fact, I feel so guilty about enjoying this song that I can’t even define what I like about it, but the fact is that I do, despite that you wouldn’t find any song like it in my iTunes.
I honestly don’t experience much musical guilt, so I’m just going with what probably sounds the worst on paper. Gracin snarls his way through this perky 80’s pop hit, imbuing it with a weird, aggressive, kind of creepy sexuality. It’s strangely engrossing.
A couple yearning to rekindle the fire in their relationship? Classic country. One asking the other if he/she remembers the old passion and the other chiming in “remind me”? That’s pretty good, too – and genuinely sexy in a way neither Brad Paisley nor Carrie Underwood has ever been on record. There’s no doubt that this single was loaded with potential.
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