James Otto’s third single from Sunset Man is a pretty solid effort. “For You” is sung with the emotion and soul that is reminiscent of Travis Tritt. This, however, doesn’t mean that there aren’t some problems with the over all product.
While he is willing to do just about anything for her, there’s one thing he can’t do: “Oh but now you’re asking too much/You want me to find somebody new/Oh I never thought I’d say this/But girl, congratulations/You found the one thing I can’t do for you.”
While his voice is good and the lyrics are sincere enough, the two just aren’t strong enough to overcome the weak melody and production. Unfortunately, this song is one of the weaker songs on an album of rather good material.
Written by Jim Brown & Liz Hengber
Grade: B-
Listen: For You
Buy: For You
I’d agree, a B- is about right.
First thing: whatever happened to “Ain’t Gonna Stop”? Seems like it was yanked awfully fast or something. In any case, I really wish they would start releasing better singles for homeboy here. He’s got a strong album on his hands and “Just Got Started Loving You” was one of my favorite singles so far this year.
Totally agree, Dan.
Oh yeah, Dan, “Ain’t Gonna Stop” is one of the songs plagued with the John Rich production.
As far as I can tell online, “Ain’t Gonna Stop” was never going to officially be a single. What was the source for the original review a couple months back? (I found that timing odd, since JGSLY hadn’t peaked at that point, and they usually don’t release singles until the former one is recurrent.
Strange, Stephen, I’m now confused as to whether or not it was actually released as a single as well. It’s not listed on wikipedia. It was, however, on the two sites that we go to for singles to review at the time of my review of the song. It must be some kind of confusion like Miranda Lambert’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” confusion. Since I don’t typically listen to regular country radio, I don’t even know if it was played on it.
Leeann,
“Ain’t Gonna Stop” wasn’t released as an official single. They label, notoriously bad at handling their artists, decided against the tempo track. Really, if you think about it, “For You” works for great counter programming right now with all the ‘tempo’ songs out there.
Leeann, I think I’m starting to hear it. Ewww.
I knew I could bring you over to my side, Dan!:)
Yeah yeah, don’t get cocky now. :D
Ha, Dan.:)
Matt, you’re right about that. I just wish he had released one of his better slow songs from the album to serve that purpose.
Don’t use Wikipedia as a source, Leeann … I’m spell4yr there, and I’ve done quite a bit of editing on his page. :-P
love the song
I’m TenPoundHammer on Wikipedia and I *wrote* the Wikipedia page on James Otto. The page *did* say that Ain’t Gonna Stop was the follow-up for a while, but I changed it once I noticed “For You” was liated on All Access.