“That Don’t Sound Like You”
Lee Brice
Written by Rhett Akins, Lee Brice, and Ashley Gorley
I really like Lee Brice. He’s got an interesting voice, and his phrasing is always original. It’s like he sneaks up behind his notes and surprises them.
“That Don’t Sound Like You” succeeds purely on Brice’s merits as a vocal stylist. The song itself is iffy.
As sweet as the sentiment is, the narrator’s concern that the girl’s new man has compromised her identity stands on some mighty weak foundation.
Maybe if all you knew about the girl was that she used to like truck tires on a gravel road and doing cannonballs, you don’t really know her as well as you’d like to think?
Anyway, he sells it, but it’s not one of his better efforts, even if it’s better than most of what his peers are doing.
Grade: B-
Honestly, when I saw Rhett Akins name I knew lyrically this would be incredibly weak.
That said, I would give it a low C or C-. The lyrics just don’t say anything, we get the typical Peach Pickers/Contemporary Country music shout out to gravel roads and trucks and blah, blah, blah.
The song is also hurt by the lack of any semblance of story or why we as a listener should care about this man and woman. We don’t know anything about their history together or why he is a “better” match for her than her current beau.
Songs like this have been done a hundred times in Country songs and have been done much better. Hell, I would say Josh Thompson and his “Cold Beer With Your Name On It” song from 1 or 2 years ago was superior to this.
This, and that backwards baseball cap became a tiresome cliché a long time ago (IMHO).