12 Comments

  1. Eh this is an F. Jason’s voice gets on my nerves the guy can’t sing that well in my opinion. The production is his typical generic rock music. The lyrics are all about having sex in a car which couldn’t Jason just stop talking about sex in his songs. This is why I don’t take him seriously.

    Grade: F.

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  2. I love this review. Why waste words on Aldean. It reminds me of one of my favorite book reviews. “The covers of this book are too far apart” – Ambrose Bierce.

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  5. Quote from review:

    Competently performed. Creatively stagnant. Completely unnecessary.

    Kind of like the artist in question (IMHO).

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  9. Hey, he became a star with much better material than this. “Amarillo Sky”, “Why” and “Laughed Until We Cried” were solid.

    Then again, those are from the same first two albums as “Johnny Cash” and “Hicktown”…

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  10. “Hicktown” is a guilty pleasure for me, I’ll admit.:)
    This guy has talent that he is choosing not to use. He sounds great on the latest Merle Haggard tribute album , but the music that he’s making now is terrible.

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  11. One of the worst things about Aldean is that he is not sexy in anyway. If his voice were sexy, or his attitude was sexy, he might- might- pull off this song. But he always sings like he is already bored. Bored by the music, bored by the singing( which is always poor), and bored by being “Jason Aldean”. Has anyone ever seen him smile? That signals two things to me: either he smarter than he appears but is so corrupted by the fame that he doesn’t care, or that he is such a talentless puppet that he will never see that his music lacks grace and staying power. Will he be singing this song at sixty? Good God don’t tell me he will be around that long.

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  12. I’m still perplexed as to why this was even designated a single.

    Granted it’s thematically in his wheelhouse. Even still, what makes this simply not work to my ears is how this just languishes in spite of the presence of his signature touring band’s guitars. Aldean clearly sounds indifferent to the material at hand. In fact, I can picture him laying on a futon with a Coors in hand and asking his engineer: “Hey, can you just pass me that mic?” and recording the vocals while recumbent there. The lack of energy in his vocals is just notably apparent.

    And here’s the thing: before many continue to get outright dismissive about Aldean in the broader sense, I actually enjoyed a significant swath of “Old Boots, New Dirt”. Minus “Gonna Know We Were Here”, I swear the latter half of that album is worth listening to, in addition to “Tryin’ To Love Me” from the otherwise lousy former half. Some of his best output to date, most notably “Don’t Change Gone”, “Too Fast” and “Two Night Town”, is all right there, along with decent cuts like the title track. On these tracks, Aldean makes earnest efforts to sound emotionally engaged, and he definitely is on “Don’t Change Gone” and “Tryin’ To Love Me”.

    “Old Boots, New Dirt” is soiled by a disposable first half that deliberately panders to the most shallow consumers, but I would in equal measure caution everyone who is dismissing Aldean altogether only based on recent radio singles to give the latter half of his latest release a try. It only tells half the story.

    *

    As for this, a deadpan D grade.

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