“Neon Light”
Blake Shelton
Written by Andrew Dorff, Mark Irwin, and Josh Kear
Brooks & Dunn made an entire career out of honky tonk puns and play on words. “Neon Light” is a throwback to those songs, with Blake Shelton previewing his new album with a song built around there being “a neon light at the end of the tunnel.”
To his credit, Shelton plays it subtle, with the song not having that arena-in-mind noisiness that has come to define today’s country music. But the song never quite gets out of first gear, either. Sure, the song didn’t need power chords and hair band chants. But it certainly would benefit from more aggressive fiddle and steel guitar.
We’re at this weird moment where a song’s country-ness is defined more by what’s absent than what’s present. If Shelton had twanged this one up instead of just toning it down, it would’ve been a better record. As is, it’s too bland. Not obnoxiously awful. Just bland.
Grade: C
I find the repetitiveness of some of the lyrics a bit annoying & as the review states the production could be better but I moderately enjoy this one & think it may even grow on me some more. Id give this a C+.
Since Derek Jeter took himself out of the otherwise meaningless Yankee-Red Sox game I’m watching, it’s almost as boring as this song.
Lyrically it can’t seem to totally get around the semi-clever pun, but it’s at least tolerable. This seems like the sort of song someone like Mark Chesnutt, or B&D, as Kevin mentions, could have knocked out back in the day with twangier production. Alas, we live in different times.
My friend played this song during our FIFA game saying “it was must listen to music”. I found it to be similar to most of current Blake Shelton songs. Bland and tasteless. It felt more vanilla than my Vanilla Coke, I was guzzling. Stick to “The Voice” Blake.
I actually like this song, and I don’t like anything Blake has released since “Who Are You When I’m Not Looking.”
It sounded like an actual song, rather than the canned garbage he usually tries to pass off as music these days.
I’d give it a C+/B-, at the least, and I’d probably even go up to a B.
One of my pet peeves is when words in a song are repeated for no apparent reason other than, I think, the songwriter couldn’t think of anything else to say in the music. For example, in this song “I prayed prayed prayed for a sign sign sign”. I just think it sounds lazy and like the kind of song you literally make up when you’re seven years old.