Single Review Roundup: Vol. 3, No. 37

A fantastic week of new singles, courtesy of BRELAND, Brad Paisley, Meghan Patrick, and Mindy Smith.

“Icing”

BRELAND

Written by BRELAND, Autumn Buysse, Jared Griffin, and Rufio Hooks

Jonathan Keefe: I’m sure this will read as heresy to some, but this record is the 2024 equivalent of a Conway Twitty hit. With a lesser performer at the helm, “Icing” would tip too far in the direction of objectification and sleaze, putting way too much emphasis on the central cake conceit.

BRELAND, to his credit, knows that his lust-filled admiration for this woman’s physical assets is secondary to the fact that she’s a complete person. Like Twitty, he’s absolutely DTF, but he also can’t believe that a woman who has her shit together is paying him any attention in the first place. This record wouldn’t work at all if he didn’t get that the “cake” and “icing” joke only lands because he and the woman are both in on it. A

Kevin John Coyne: Before I even get to the song, I want to observe that the cover art for this single captures nostalgia for the American South just as well as the covers of King’s Record Shop and Storms of Life.

Moving on to the song, BRELAND has once again combined playful PG-13 lyrics with genuine affection and sentiment for the woman in his life, and it’s absolutely what Maddie & Tae were talking about when they said how Twitty and Strait used to do it.

And BRELAND is using language that is authentic to him, not borrowing it from hip-hop wholesale a la “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.” He’s so joyous behind the mic too, which stands out among the crowd of dour frowning suburban boys in designer hats and jeans. I’m so on board with country music going in this direction. A

 

“Golden Child”

Meghan Patrick

Written by Aaron Eshuis, Joey Hyde, and Meghan Patrick

KJC: I’m so appreciative of a song that speaks directly to girls in a genre that has been telling them for a generation now that their primary value is as an ornament to boys.

Patrick’s writing is incisive and insightful, acknowledging how external voices conspire to drown out internal ones, especially for young women. Patrick is on the other side of that time of her life, regardless of her chronological age, and her hard fought wisdom is worth sharing.

Oh, and she can sing beautifully as well.  An intelligent and empathetic song written and sung well on country radio? That would be golden, child. A

JK: Considering how the song’s verses are a familiar “letter to my younger self” trope, I wasn’t expecting Patrick to use the phrase “golden child” the way she does in the song’s lyrical hook, and it’s such an effective, surprising turn. There’s a whole generation of women who learned the right lessons from Miranda Lambert’s and Taylor Swift’s songwriting, and this song places Patrick squarely in their ranks.

I wish the fiddle that opens the track had been more prominent throughout; the production on this is too boilerplate and indistinct. Patrick’s warm, empathetic vocal does all of the heavy lifting to make sure that the message of this song lands. It’s been ages since a Canadian act got any real traction on the US country charts, but I’m rooting for Patrick with this one. B+

“Jericho”

Mindy Smith

Written by Matraca Berg and Mindy Smith

JK: As thrilling as it is to get new music from Mindy Smith, it’s hard to ignore how “Jericho” also bears so many of the hallmarks of co-writer Matraca Berg. There’s a balance here between the plainspokenness of Smith’s best narrative-driven songwriting and Berg’s more poetic, image-heavy language: The travelogue elements in which Smith sings of “going on down to Jericho” are elevated by the kinds of details (“raisin’ up Hell like a holy roller”) that have Berg’s pen all over them.

The overall effect is a fascinating expansion and deepening of Smith’s artistic persona. Whereas much of her best previous work mined the tension from a wide-eyed innocent’s forays into a harsh world, “Jericho” is a song from someone who has seen some shit and knows where it’s all leading. Smith has pivoted from her Songs of Innocence to her Songs of Experience era, and who better than Berg to make sure those songs truly fly?

The clarity of Smith’s voice is undiminished on “Jericho,” though it’s been more than a decade since her last full studio album. There’s always been just a bit of a bite in her vocal timbre, and I don’t think that’s been put to better use in one of her songs since she debuted with “Come to Jesus” more than twenty years back. This is a minor-key triumph of a single– my only quibble is that the outro is far too long, so this really does need a “radio edit”– about how the walls are fixing to fall if we aren’t vigilant. A-

KJC: Berg’s writing often has a Southern Gothic quality to it. She’s always been more interested in what lurks beneath the smiling facade of the American South than she’s been in its “Bless Your Heart” veneer.

Mindy Smith is the perfect vocalist and songwriter to collaborate with Berg. Just thinking of her tackling “Calico Plains” or “If I Had Wings” gives me chills. “Jericho” doesn’t reach the emotional depths of those two songs, but it comes pretty close, and Smith’s haunting vocals heighten the lyrical impact of a strong composition.

As Jonathan noted above, it’s just a little too long. While everyone’s rediscovering the virtues of nineties country, let’s include brevity in the revival. B+

 

“Truck Still Works”

Brad Paisley

Written by Will Bundy, Rodney Clawson, Chris DuBois, Brad Paisley, and Hunter Phelps

KJC: Time is a funny thing. In my mind, it’s turned Brad Paisley from being a big step down from his nineties forefathers to being one of the last superstars who was tethered to country music’s rich legacy at all.

“Mud On the Tires” was among my least favorite hits from Paisley because it was so derivative of K.T. Oslin’s “Hey Bobby” but lacked that song’s sexual energy and clever coyness. It felt like the work of someone who was studying country music more than making it his own.

“Truck Still Works” couldn’t be any further from that. It’s a Brad Paisley record in all the best ways, featuring the stunningly creative musicianship that won him multiple Grammys for his instrumental tracks but that we rarely heard on his radio singles back in the day. Age has done wonders for his voice as well, which has a gravitas absent on his earlier recordings.

This is pure joy from start to finish. This week’s four singles on a loop could make country radio listenable again. A

JK: The thing about Paisley is that, when he stops trying too damn hard to be clever, he actually is pretty clever. The reason “Truck” works is that he doesn’t overplay his hand as to how it’s about trying to reconnect with a hot-and-heavy summer fling from a lifetime ago, but it’s also about trying to recreate the same mojo that made Paisley one of the genre’s top-tier A-listers, also a lifetime ago.

The interpolation of “Mud on the Tires” in the bridge here sets this as a literal sequel as much as a spiritual one, but it’s the thoughtful details in the lyrics– I love the line about a couple of “hair ties on the gearshift”– that put this squarely in the upper-tier of Paisley’s singles. I was intrigued by the rootsier direction that his Son of the Mountains project– which may or may not be DOA?– hinted at last year, but I’m just as excited to hear Paisley offer something that actually recalls the quality of his peak era.

We got a new vintage Keith Urban single in 2024, and now Brad Paisley’s dropped one, too. If Sugarland makes “Georgia is Yours” an official single, the 90s country appreciation era could very well give way to an early aughts country revival. A

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