“Blue Ain’t Your Color”
Keith Urban
Written by Clint Lagerberg, Hillary Lindsey, Steven Lee Olsen
“Blue Ain’t Your Color” is the best vocal showcase that’s come Keith Urban’s way in a long time.
The simple arrangement stays out of his way, and he’s able to wrap his voice around a familiar but sturdy melody. His romantic delivery, pulsating with empathy and an undercurrent of desire, also serves the additional purpose of spackling the gaps in the lyrical structure. The metaphor makes for a catchy title and can sustain the song for a good portion of it, but the bottom falls out in the second verse. “If I were a painter, I wouldn’t change ya, I’d just paint you bright, baby,” simply doesn’t work.
Thankfully, Urban’s a good enough singer to pull even that ridiculous couplet off, and when he’s back on the solid ground of the chorus, all is well again. It’s a song that could’ve been perfect if the songwriters had done another draft, but even as is, it’s worth listening to, just to hear the man sing.
Grade: B
I do agree with you about that second verse, but Keith’s voice and performance of the song does help you overlook that one part! I would give it an A-! I love it! The video is really sexy, too!
Good song. Since I’m retired and occasionally have some extra time on my hands, I decided to try and tackle that offending painter couplet. While I definitely can’t write music, I always thought that I could at least write a lousy lyric. I looked for inspiration to Tracy Lawrence’s Paint Me a Birmingham and Trisha Yearwood’s I Don’t Paint Myself into Corners. Nothing clicked. Letting Go by Suzy Bogguss begins She’ll Take the Painting in the Hallway. Nada. I went back to Don McLean’s Vincent, Starry Starry Night, Paint your palette blue and grey. Still nothing. I have time though. While at 70 I’m one of the oldest of the baby boomers, I’m still relatively young as far as senior artists go. Grandma Moses didn’t begin painting seriously til she was 78.