Toby Keith is such an ace ballad singer that he can make a totally lame ballad still sound kind of cool. That’s pretty much the story with “Lost You Anyway.”
The song attempts to flesh out a relationship which has presumably been doomed from the beginning, but reveals frustratingly little about why that is, content to linger in one-dimensional self-pity instead. The chorus is especially annoying, as the strong melody gets neutered by a barrage of lazy, vague lyrics (“could’ve tried just a little bit harder…dug down just a little bit deeper.” Are we talking about the relationship or the songwriting?)
But the vocal performance is strong as ever, and the production does the country-arena rock hybrid thing better than most of its ilk, with a repeated electric guitar fill that manages to not sound obnoxious. I doubt anyone is going to remember this five years from now, but as radio filler goes, it’s palatable.
Written by Toby Keith and Bobby Pinson
Grade: C-
Listen: Lost You Anyway
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The subject of the song, especially the lyrics during the chorus, remind me of Blake Shelton’s “Maybe You Wouldn’t Be Gone.”
Why is it that the big names Toby, Kenny and Rascal Flatts mainly feel the need to releas a song every ten weeks. There is no life to their songs.
Radio overplays them from the minute they come out until the next one. This makes me personally not appreciate their music, and I think it is the music that suffers and it shows a lot lately.
I can’t wait for the review of Kenny’s new one, I heard it yesterday and it is as bad as it can get for a country song, it is very A-typical, stereotypical country.
up – they don’t come out with new ones every 10 weeks. Toby has 3 singles from each CD that comes out and this is his third single. The other’s I don’t know about. OVERPLAYED!!!! Taylor Swift is OVERPLAYED. Sorry but the only thing she sings about is BREAK UPS. What is she going to do when a relationship works. I don’t mean to be rude but to me she needs to get more substance in her music. Everyone makes a big deal out of her because she is young. I don’t care about her prom and her birthday and all that, they don’t do that for anyone else. And being young, Leanne Rhimes had better voice when she was 13 than Taylor does now.
woooow Jean I was just stating how it is here wher I live Toby is played at least once every hour it is a little boring.
Also I did not mention one thing about Taylor.
I loved it. To me, what it’s about is she gave him a chance to “fix” the relationship, but he’d done so much damage already that they could never be really happy together.
I loved it. I see it very prevalent today where there is just nothing he could have done, he could have been perfect, and she still would have walked away.
It is harder to write abstractly and with meaning than it is to be detailed, spoon feeding a story. It’s a different style and I for one, liked it a lot.
It lets you fill in the space…. great.. I loved it.
Well a year later…heard the song again and cranked the sound to max…Love the song, love the story it’s telling, love everything about it! Five years from now I will still feel the song… just saying ;-)