“Real Good Man”
Tim McGraw
Written by Rivers Rutherford and George Teren
Radio & Records
#1 (2 weeks)
October 3 – October 10, 2003
Billboard
#1 (2 weeks)
October 11 – October 18, 2003
Tim McGraw is bound for the Country Music Hall of Fam for one reason alone: his excellent taste in material.
The hits that will outlive him are the ones where the songwriting is beyond reproach, and the melodies are simple to deliver.
“Real Good Man” doesn’t meet either standard. I could imagine someone like Keith Urban making the “real bad boy” / “real good man” hook sound both playful and sincere. But McGraw simply isn’t strong enough of a vocalist to bridge the distance between a mediocre song and a good record.
It’s the least convincing machismo this side of Rascal Flatts.
“Real Good Man” gets a C.
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Much as I stuck my nose up at the goofy lyrics of “She’s My Kind of Rain”, I had a measure of respect for it for being (really, really!) different, and for McGraw for singing it. I harbor no such split decision for “Real Good Man”, as flaccid of an attempt at “outlaw” image cultivation as I remember from before the bro-country era. The pretentiousness of referring to oneself as a “real bad boy” negates any credibility on the part of the listener that the narrator is as rugged as he wants us to believe.
One of the reasons I always enjoyed Tim McGraw in his halcyon days is that he seemed really good at selling an uptempo song. My how far he’d fallen from the days of (album cut) “Renegade” and “Something Like That” to a limp noodle like “Real Good Man”. The Dancehall Doctors album seemed to get good reviews generally but three of its four singles fell far short of passing the test for me.
Grade: D
After three phenomenal albums, Dancehall Doctors was a major disappointment for me. One clunker song After another. I can’t remember the last time I listened to it.
This song was one of those clunkers. It’s almost like he pulled all the rejected songs from previous albums and put them all on one.
Yes, Tim was always overrated and yes, this song could have been better under a different vocalist but it’s a good listen. “B-“
Not my favorite, but I do like the melody. I’ve heard far worse attempts at male artists trying to project an energy they just don’t have. David Lee Murphy’s “Out with a Bang”, Ricky Van Shelton’s “Wild Man”… Brad Tyler’s “Fridaynititus”…
And the masculinity doesn’t gross me out nearly as much as “I Got My Game On”, which had no hooks or irony. This guy at least sounds like he has some good traits to him, and I can’t fault the song there.
Just like most of his hits in this timespan, this one seemed to have zero staying power. Most people just seem to skip from “My Next Thirty Years” to “Live Like You Were Dying”.
I don’t hate this song, though I think a better vessel could pull it off. Someone like Trace Adkins would feel more authentic in singing this.
I agree – Dancehall Doctors was a major disappointment of an album.
I never thought of it in the terms that Caj used, but yes it does seem as if he gathered up the rejects from previous sessions and put them out as an album. A few years ago, I was weeding out albums never to be listened to again – this was one of my discards
I am on the down-side of my opinion of Tim McGraw. Just too much low-quality noise and too many outright gaffes in his discography to warrant his superstardom. Today, he isn’t aging well as a creative elder statesman in country music, and I don’t believe his legacy is faring much better. His celebrity is still a real head scratcher for me. I agree with Tom P.that McGraw was always overated.
Kevin’s passing shot at Rascal Flatts in the write-up made me laugh.