“What Was I Thinkin’”
Dierks Bentley
Written by Brett Beavers, Dierks Bentley, and Deric Ruttan
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
September 19, 2003
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
September 26, 2003
The lyrics may be a little more than an adolescent fantasy, and that certainly the target audience for this record, but it still has significance because it is the launching pad of one of the most important artists of his generation.
That’s what makes it so cool to look back and listen to today. For me, at least.
I hear the crisp country instrumentation with light bluegrass elements and I can hear how he’s already expressing his musical identity right out of the gate. Like Joe Diffie and Garth Brooks before him, his voice is so expressive that even an uptempo romp that’s nearly spoken word, he can still communicate a rich range of emotions through his understanding of rhythm.
He’s going to do so much better than this with time, but he was pretty damn good right out of the gate.
“What Was I Thinkin’” gets a B+.
Every No. 1 Single of the 2000s
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This was a generational gateway song for many non-country fans in my social circle in 2003. People responded to it and often outright loved it. Country music fans did too, and they were even more eager to hear what would come next from Dierks Bentley.
This debut is pure fun, and those bluegrass accents sound great.
This one is still near the top for me after all this time. That rapid-fire half-spoken delivery, the unusual melody, the unconventional song structure, the grit… easily one of the best, most fun, and most identifiable debut singles in my book.
There are few better examples of a new artist coming out of the starting gate more effectively than Dierks Bentley did. “What Were You Thinking” was just the shot of adrenaline country radio needed in 2003 and it stands out even more remarkably today as the alternative reality gold standard of what bro-country could have been. Combining a steady roll of clever lyrics with a driving instrumental that never wavers in its country delivery, Bentley captures the urgency that the story demanded and brings this teenage fantasy to life as vividly as the best popcorn movie of the 80s. It’s hard to believe that a subgenre of country that launched with a song as promising as this would so quickly become a parody of itself with its endless lazy cliches and douchey snap tracks. The upside is that this song’s many fourth-rate imitators only manage to make Dierks Bentley’s debut source material seem that much more fantastic.
I’ve enjoyed much more of Dierks Bentley’s songbook than not in the 20 years since and consider him one of the smartest singer-songwriters in the business, but there was something uniquely infectious about this song that I don’t think he’s quite managed to recapture since. That’s not to say I even think this is his “best” song, but it’s certainly the most energetic and country radio has needed more of that in the last two decades. Plenty of solid Dierks material on the horizon I look forward to reviewing though.
Grade: A
A solid “B”. A good song and performance but like so many songs from this time on up to present. The instrumentation/production sounds like any Honky Tonk in Nashville any night of the week. Good, but just way to common to be unique.
This is such a classic. It’s still an instant song a long. His debut was full of great songs. Really disagreed with “My Last Name” being a single. I really loved “Nearest Distant Shore”, “Whiskey Tears” and “Train Travelin”
Dierks Bentley was instantly unique as an artist. And besides a couple of missteps, he’s stayed true to his artistic persona and been one of the bright spots in mainstream country music over the last 20 years. This was such a compelling debut single.
I’m so happy you guys are doing a recap of the 2000s. I got into country music (and music in general) in the early 2000s, and my interest in new country music faded as time moved into the early-mid 2010s, and I moved onto other genres. So this single decade of country music is where most of my country nostalgia lies. This song is one of the great examples of why.
…the line “…he peppered my tail gate…” – country as poetic as it gets. his facial expressions at the begining of the clip – priceless. “a’s” all over.