“The Impossible”
Joe Nichols
Written by Kelley Lovelace and Lee Thomas Miller
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
September 20, 2002
Let me start by saying that I genuinely like Joe Nichols. He’s a great singer who came along a few years too late to have his talents fully realized and appreciated. He was the countrified Billy Dean we didn’t know we were missing back in the early nineties.
But I have to use his debut record to make a larger point about how the ball was being dropped in Nashville at the turn of the century. This was an era where “that’s good enough” became good enough, and quality control went fully by the wayside.
The first verse and chorus of “The Impossible” are perfect. Impossibly perfect, really. Because the entire tale is told in the first verse and chorus. The payoff of the strong father showing weakness at his own father’s death, as seen through the eyes of his own son of thirteen years, cannot be matched. The song’s done. Add a “wrap it up” bridge if you need to, but the tale has been told.
But they insist on a second verse, and it brings in this dramatic arc that begins with a car accident and ends in a triumphant scene at a high school graduation and it’s all just too much. It cheapens the intimacy and universality of the opening verse and drags it kicking and screaming into the Hallmark section of your local CVS. By the time we get the bridge, which makes it about saving a current relationship, we’ve circled the drain completely.
This is technically better than most of the records we’ll cover later in the decade, but God, does it frustrate me more than most of them because of how good this could have been with some nineties style quality control.
“The Impossible” gets a B.
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I can see how the second verse might be too much, but I liked it. To me, the song being about impossible odds and leading to the payoff of “don’t give up on you and me” is understated but potent.
I was one of the three people who bought his debut album in 1996, along with Steve Azar’s, so it surprised me when both acts finally had hits six years later. I didn’t like this song at first but it grew on me.