“The Good Stuff”
Kenny Chesney
Written by Jim Collins and Craig Wiseman
Radio & Records
#1 (7 weeks)
July 26 – September 6, 2002
Billboard
#1 (7 weeks)
July 27 – September 7, 2002
The islander image was so firmly established with the No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems aesthetic that it’s easy to forget that the title track was the final single from that set.
The image would be essential in establishing an identity for Kenny Chesney in the larger pop culture landscape, but it was a good old-fashioned country ballad that made his career go supernova.
It was just fantastic timing. His Greatest Hits album had successfully recontextualized his career up until that point, helping listeners to finally connect him in their minds with all of his big radio hits from the previous years.
They were ready for a career record from Chesney, and they got one. “The Good Stuff” is an incredible song. It’s heavily influenced by the plotline of “Chiseled in Stone,” but it takes a different approach toward tugging your heartstrings.
“The Good Stuff” was released several years before the Pixar classic Up, which used a collection of small vignettes from a marriage to tell the story of a relationship from its origins until death do they part.
This song uses the same approach so effectively, and it has a similar emotional impact on me. It’s always the burnt dinner part that wrecks me, much like in Up, it’s the subtle reference to a lost child that hits me harder than the wife’s eventual death. It’s because of the compassion on the husband’s face in the movie, and the very specific way he empathizes with her through his actions and without words.
The stakes may not be as high at the dinner table, but the way this husband protects his new wife’s feelings through asking for seconds is just so damn beautiful:
And it’s the way that she looks with the rice in her hairEating burnt suppers the whole first yearAnd asking for seconds to keep her from tearing upYeah, man, that’s the good stuff
It gets me every time. It really is the good stuff.
Chesney’s superstar era begins in earnest here. It won’t be my favorite years of him as a singer. I prefer both his youthful high pitched exuberance of his early career and his more recent gravitas-laden vocals on his newest material over his rather ordinary sound during this decade.
But man, did the guy have great taste in material sometimes, and this is one of the best examples of how a perfectly constructed song can be brought home by a good enough singer with a clear sense of his limitations and exquisite instincts for song selection.
“The Good Stuff” gets an A.
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It’s as solid good song. “B”. No complaints but just not a song I would reach for and not worthy of a 7-week run at the top, but I guess this was the best Nashville had to offer at this time?
I’m at a loss as to why 2002-me HATED this song, because I don’t ever recall articulating why. It’s easily one of my favorites of his now.
Some of the best country music songs, in my opinion, come from sympathetic and real portrayals of older people. “In My Next Life” by Merle Haggard, “Remembering” by Ashley Campbell, etc. This is a fantastic story crammed full of detail, portraying the “old man at a bar” as a very real person with his own bittersweet story to tell. I feel like I’ve met that exact guy many times, even though I almost never go to bars.