Kip, let us write your lyrics…
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[5.00]
Iain Mew: The second hand classic rock moves bothered me a bit at first, though they’re all well worked. Then I realised that they were the point – “…so you escape through the radio”, taking what escape you can get, and I started to like it a lot more. Plus “let’s wake the town that never stops sleeping” is a good enough line to forgive money/honey.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Not only have Toby Keith and Eric Church mastered the hermaneutics of beer money, but neither wants to sound like Jon Bon Jovi.
[2]
Brad Shoup: The song’s partially set “[i]n a field where we can scream,” one of the most desperate images country music’s offered in some time. “Small Town Saturday Night” is my typical referent… the difference is that Ketchum’s kids have this animal itch to get away, and Moore’s seem more or less resigned, but still looking over their shoulders. All the John Cougar tropes can’t shake this torpor.
[4]
Jonathan Bogart: John Cougar would be proud. John Mellencamp, though, would suggest more specificity.
[6]
Anthony Easton: Further proof of the thesis that modern country radio is eighties rock repackaged. Although the money/honey line is lazy as hell, it’s at least honest and competently constructed, and Moore has an excellent voice. After a week of 40-plus, that’s enough.
[8]
Pete Baran: Money/honey is a songwriting capital offence, so Kip cannot get a decent score by definition, but nearly everything else is right in this non-threatening drinking song. Structurally and tonally, this is pitched perfectly, with the right amount of self-pity mixed with the good time country it is.
[5]
Will Adams: People like to complain when songs that use the tired rhyme of “fire/desire”, but my least favorite is without a doubt the dreaded “money/honey” (with “pretty/city” coming in at a close second). That the rhyme is central to the chorus doesn’t do the song any favors, especially when the lyric it falls into – “You’ve got the kiss that tastes like honey/And I’ve got a little beer money” – becomes just a shade creepier each time you hear it.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: The riffs are watered down to swill — you can hear the guitar stabs that aren’t underpinning “beer money.” When Shania Twain revived ’80s Mutt-rock, at least she provided a red disc.
[4]