Country Universe – A Country Music Blog

Jack Ingram, This Is It

Sunday, April 15th, 2007

Jack Ingram
This Is It

Jack Ingram may seem like a new artist to country listeners, but he’s been releasing albums since 1995. In 2005, he attached two new studio tracks to a live album, and they both hit the top twenty. “Wherever You Are” made it all the way to #1, while its follow-up “Love You” reached #12.

Big Machine is trying to build on the success he’s had at radio by including both of those songs again on his new studio album, This Is It. The excellent “Lips of an Angel”, which technically is the lead single, means that three of the first five songs on the album have already garnered wide exposure, with a fourth, “Measure of a Man”, hitting airwaves now. It’s a smart marketing tool for an emerging artist, but it makes the album feel more like a compilation at first.

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Jack Ingram, “Measure of a Man”

Saturday, April 14th, 2007

Jack Ingram, “Measure of a Man”

A well-written story about a man who leaves home young because of a volatile relationship with his father, but reaches out to fix things with him when he becomes a father of his own.   Songs like this often cast the son as the prodigal kind, who rejects the traditional, small-town values of his family but returns to them after getting burned in the real world.   Ingram’s song is much more realistic, and believable because of it.   The father really wasn’t as good as he should’ve been to his son, but the son has also let pride get in the way of restoring the relationship.    In other words, it sounds like something that actually might have happened in real life.

Grade: A-

Listen: Measure of a Man

Buy: Measure of a Man