While I understand the points made in the Mini-review feature for “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)” here upon its posting, I still largely dissented from it. Sure, it was catchy………but it didn’t distract from the reality that its laughably awful faults were just as ostentatious as its hook. Awful, yet catchy, songs that garner stronger grades in my book have to have a way of “covering up” its glaring traumas by being sooooo catchy your mind doesn’t dwell on them. Not once when listening to “Country Girl (Shake It For Me”) have I not felt shame listening to it because of the inane lyrics and regurgitated stereotypes. It is a near-failing grade single, plain and simple………redeemed from an F only for its hook.

Then “I Don’t Want This Night To End”, in spite of its admittedly cinematic production appeal, just came across as absolutely creepy to me, in the same way a lot of dance-pop songs saturating Top 40 radio are: they perpetuate a dangerously misguided fantasy of meeting a stranger then, without words or tangible connection, instantly proceeding and surrendering to sex (or at least something further than sexual tension). It’s just an unsettling listen to my ears, and it doesn’t help the lyrics are pedestrian too and might as well have been selectively borrowed from Top 40 dance-pop songs.

This is different. I can listen to “Drunk On You” and embrace its escapism without feeling distracted or guilty in the process.

I understand the appeal of singles like this, however. Despite the mediocrity, even cring-inducing moments, of his songwriting……..Luke Bryan just strikes me as a strong entertainer. The annual “Spring Break” EP releases……….the catering to younger demographics with references to speakers going boom-boom and putting your hands in the air (“I Don’t Want This Night To End”)……..the swagger he shows in his movement onstage…………it just seems blatantly obvious his job is more to give large crowds danceable, feel-good anthems as opposed to making groundbreaking artistic statements. And he has been doing that resounding well.

Again, this is not an A-grade single in my view, but still a damn solid B+ I’d say.

That still doesn’t alter my impression that Luke Bryan has run a once-is-enough theme into the ground. It’s not helping me that he seems to have decided that regardless of the writer, this is now his wheelhouse. In fact it kind of makes it worse (imo).