New to FOX this fall: WHEN COUNTRY SINGERS USE TECHNOLOGY…
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[4.78]
Anthony Easton: Maybe if you weren’t such a fucking whiner the man would stick with you. Sara Evans used to have one of the more singular voices in Country, and she used to know how to push the lyrics through that voice — excellent choice of song writers and the like — but this is so far beneath her, and she sings it with such convinction, I am frightened that she has now given up entirely.
[3]
Frank Kogan: A lovely singer with bite, Evans goes for self-uplift on this track and ends up wooden and wet simultaneously, accompanied by supportive guitar roars that just get in the way. I hope she leaves the suds in the bucket next time.
[3]
Josh Langhoff: Sara’s voice, while undeniably rich, seems to skate over the top of the material, oddly detached. Or maybe not so oddly, considering the song only gets interesting when she starts calling him “baby” during the bridge, a tacked-on “I keep lying to myself” subtext that quickly disappears without consequence.
[2]
Alfred Soto: Self-help platitudes sound best when the believer articulates them in a voice as shaded as Evans’. But the arrangement takes the lyrics literally: they ignore pain, mess, complications. That’s when I noticed that Evans isn’t that resourceful a singer either.
[4]
Zach Lyon: Co-written by Hillary Scott of Lady Antebellum, and wouldn’t it be so much better if it were performed by Lady Antebellum? What nice writing and chorus and sentiment. We just miss out on the execution, better accomplished by a vocalist that wouldn’t fade into the wallpaper and tighter production that wouldn’t fill the track with random little diddlings in an attempt to mask its blandness.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: She takes a hell of a chance leaving the song’s actual strength for very near the end; but it pays off, and relistens sweeten with anticipation.
[7]
Chuck Eddy: These professionally sung self-actualization lyrics could use way more specifics. But if this was a current r&b ballad hit rather than a current c&w ballad hit, I’d probably be praising the line where Sara brushes her teeth as a breakthrough true-life detail. Which is probably one reason I listen to current c&w radio more than current r&b radio. And why I’d take Ke$ha brushing her teeth with you-know-what over either.
[5]
Michaelangelo Matos: One of those songs where you start mentally calibrating which of your friends will be singing it at karaoke. The one I hope to hear it from most is my sister Alex, with whom I had the pleasure of going out singing AT LAST the other weekend, along with our sister Brittany and her boyfriend Miguel. This could be tighter, and by the last minute and a half it becomes really obviously a bravura showpiece rather than the more felt one it starts out as. But the second verse, in which she turns off their song after a minute on the car radio, belongs in the Songwriting Museum.
[8]
Martin Skidmore: The lyric is okay, but the melody is utterly forgettable, and the musical step up to the chorus feels ancient by now.
[5]