Mr. Urban, you’re trying to trick me.
You’re giving me an achingly sincere vocal performance. You’re giving me a stripped down production that’s genuinely country, fiddle and all. You’re giving me your life story, from the music to the marriage to the birth of your daughter.
It all adds up to so much goodness that you almost distracted me from the clunky and self-indulgent songwriting. I can’t even give you a pass on that, because you didn’t write it.
Is there anyone left in Nashville with a functioning memory of country music?
Trisha Yearwood put out “Georgia Rain” in 2005. This is almost the same song. The theme, storyline, geography, and even the weather are all identical.
The only differences? It’s not written as well or sung as well. Not even close.
When I was a very young child, maybe five or six, there was a song that used to scare me a little bit: “Maneater.”
When Hall & Oates sang about her only coming out at night and warned, “Watch out boy, she’ll chew you up,” my literal little mind thought she was a monster that was going around eating people. It creeped me out.
Somewhere tonight, there must be another small boy or girl listening in terror to Jamey Johnson’s “Heartache.”
Much credit has been and should be given to The Band Perry for resisting the popular urge to rock out with their country music. As a result of their more laid back hybrid of folksy country instrumentation, this young group has received well-deserved critical praise. Where they falter, however, is with their lyrics.
“Little Miss’ is one of many socially conscious songs on Sugarland’s The Incredible Machine, but it’s the only one that truly works. It succeeds where the others fail for two main reasons.
One, it describes things as they are now, instead of trying to inspire us with idyllic images of how the world could be if we just, you know, did something. The details used to describe a woman who “is so much more than you like to talk about” captures the dilemma that faces so many women today with little descriptions that add up to a larger picture of all of the compromises that must be made to a woman’s ambition and talent for her to not offend those who might be offended by them.
This is a joke, right?
Because if it’s a joke, it’s absolutely brilliant. The video alone is worthy of In Living Color at its heyday.
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