I love the sound of the record, the clean and crisp production, and the overall nineties country-ness of it.
More than twenty years in, Alan Jackson’s sounding as great as ever, delivering a vocal that’s all charm, personality and general tunefulness.
But I can’t get behind, “I’ve got a bug in my margarita.” It’s a stupid line to construct an entire song around.
I also don’t buy the bridge, which effectively destroys the good time/melancholy equilibrium that the song had maintained up until that point.
Honestly, I’m frustrated. We’re running out of mainstream artists who still make records that sound like this. They’re the last of a dying breed. Without better songs to help them cut through the clutter on the radio dial, their extinction is imminent. Good just isn’t gonna cut it anymore.
Grade: B
Listen: Long Way to Go
…guess, if a bug was asked to choose between aj’s margarita and mary chapin’s windshield, it’d go wings down for the salty glass.
better than chattahoochee in my book and no. 1 written all over it.
(Listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPT_VrG24i8)
I agree with the overall point… sounds nice enough, but this just isn’t a very well written song. There aren’t really any clever turns of phrase, and it’s really two songs sloppily combined into one:
1) Him drinking a woman away the beach and still having a “long, long way to go”
2) Him trying to drink a woman away at the beach but having bad-luck problems pop up that prevent him from doing so (e.g. bug in margarita, rain at the beach, etc.)
Either one could have been fun separately, but it just comes off as kind of awkward and forced as it is.
In my opinion, Strait’s summer single is much, much, better than this… I usually agree with you, Kevin, but I’m surprised they got the same grade.