Single Review: Jack Ingram, “Barbie Doll”

Country, blues and rock ‘n’ roll – mostly the lattter two – combine for a hearty serving of frat boy fun on Jack Ingram’s latest single. “Barbie Doll” has been a fan favorite since its initial release on Ingram’s 1999 set Hey You, but this latest iteration boasts a driving arrangement that may finally get the track on mainstream radio.

The song marries Ingram’s straightforward hook sense to Todd Snider’s rambling barroom-sage style, wringing as much talk as it can out of a pretty slight premise (“dude, that girl you’re checking out is a total B-word”) and culminating in a big group shout-a-long.

It would probably be annoying as hell coming from a Jason Aldean-type, but Ingram sells it, delivering the kind of loose, grinning performance that can only be honed by performing one’s art for untold numbers of drunk guys.

I must say that part of me misses the slow-burning spite of the song’s earlier arrangement, but this rocked-up reinterpretation works in its own way, and the track still sounds fresher than most Nashville product. Plus, this single edit omits the distracting Dierks Bentley cameo featured on the album. Plus, Todd Snider still co-wrote it.

So “Barbie Doll” 2.0 turns out, y’know, pretty darn fun. A little mindless, maybe a bit of a sellout, but hey – I’ll get drunk to it.

Written by Jack Ingram and Todd Snider

Grade: B+

Listen: Barbie Doll

Buy (be warned: only the inferior version with Dierks Bentley is currently available for purchase):

8 Comments

  1. This guy irks me. He is a Keith Urban wanna be and fails. I don’t even think he has a good singing voice at all.

  2. “Plus, this single edit omits the distracting Dierks Bentley cameo featured on the album”

    Interesting, because it looks like the single debuted on radio as Jack Ingram with Dierks Bentley

  3. That seems to happen even when it’s not officially supposed to. TThe same thing happened with “Find Out Who Your Friends Are” with Tracy Lawrence, Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw. The song was released sans McGraw and Chesney, but radio kept playing the album version anyway. I believe the same thing might have happened with the Reba/Chesney duet. Chesney was replaced with Skip Ewing for the single, but radio played the album version with Chesney anyway.

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