Single Review: Little Big Town, “Happy People”

“Happy People”
Little Big Town

Written by Lori McKenna and Hailey Whitters

Patty Loveless once said that her job as a singer is to not get in the way of the song.

Little Big Town have a great song in “Happy People,” full of wisdom and life advice that would probably save the world if everyone adhered to it.

But the band gets in the way of a great song by singing it all in subdued harmonies throughout. The lyrics are remarkably strong, and they needed the spotlight of a clearly discernible lead vocal to maximize their impact.

It’s still a very good record. The harmonies come to life in the chorus, and when a song is this great, you can only get in its way so much. But I suspect the best renditions of this song will be the live ones.

Grade: B

8 Comments

  1. Love the lyrics. I’m not surprised that one of the writers is Lori McKenna. (Never heard of Hailey Whitters before this morning.) I’d like to hear a version of Happy People with the clearly discernible lead vocal you suggest even though I’ll buy it as is.

  2. They lyrics are great, and (despite the production, which I agree with Kevin on), I love this song.

    Lori McKenna is a legend, of course. Hailey Whitters (the co-writer) is an excellent songwriter, and I hope she gains more popularity/people record more of her songs. Here’s her singing this live, for those interested in how it sounds with a lead singer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdtzLL0Trtk

    For those interested, a few other great songs of Hailey’s besides this are:

    One More Hell (written after her brother died)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zt2o74e0W4

    Low All Afternoon (later recorded by Martina McBride)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeCKB_f8j_s

    Get Around
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ4JTD96IMA

    Her work is definitely worth checking out. She has one album that came out in 2015, and hopefully many more in the future.

  3. I would like an acoustic version of this, or just one without all the drums. Really, it’s the drums that drag this away from the A it should have, it’s all just bumpa-bumpa-bumpa-bumpa throughout and it distracts from everything.

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