His good news? That we’ve bumped him up almost a full point since his first time around…
Ian Mathers: Obviously not as cheery as “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” (although remember how that song starts) and yet it still feels warmly communal, mostly via the handclaps and massed backing vocals. And the rest of the backing still feels pretty massive, somehow. But Shaboozey manages to at least mostly dodge the mawkish, generic feeling of a lot of other recent songs that might express sentiments about “tryin’ to get away from the old me” and so on. Maybe it’s just the plainness and humility of “all I really need is a little good news” and the way the lyrics present a troubled narrator who’s gone through some shit but expresses that in a more grounded way. Or maybe he just has a nicer voice than the competition (a little extra pitch correction in places notwithstanding). I don’t know!
[7]
Katherine St. Asaph: The genial “A Bar Song”-minus-“Tipsy” arrangement masks a surprisingly deep despair in Shaboozey’s lyrics — surprising, that is, unless you long as a listener to hear your own despair mirrored back at you, and seek that out in every lyric. That probably describes a lot of people; I wonder whether people are more likely to latch onto this kind of Lumineers-y communal singalong chorus amid the much-chronicled “loneliness epidemic.” I’m not saying there’s a thinkpiece-grade correlation — said epidemic would need to have swelled around 2013, that sound’s last time around, then ebbed shortly after — but I can see the appeal.
[7]
Al Varela: “All I ever need is a little good news” has been a very resonant lyric with me throughout the year so far. Exhausting headlines and uncertainty of the future have made this sweet little song looking for a light at the end of the tunnel hit me not as a moment of optimism, but simply as a plea for life to get a little easier. The shambling acoustic guitars and sing-along hook are so easy to get in your head, but it doesn’t have the good vibes and good times of “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” “Good News” is for when everyone at the bar is having a bad day, and the only remedy is a toast to some better news down the line. I’ll drink to that.
[8]
Nortey Dowuona: The people who hired them are scared of seeing the toll the work they won’t do costs them. And good news would be the workers on these ranches seeing both a pay increase and more days off. So much of our lives depends on people like this. Look a little deeper into it all. The news might surprise you! And that fiddle might bring you to tears.
[10]
Mark Sinker: The burr in his voice is amazing, he should use it more, and more effectively. None of the rest is especially shaped to tug at you.
[5]
Leah Isobel: “Good News” is oriented towards hollowness, built to be anything to anyone: its metaphors cover the spectrum from classic (“Drowned my sorrows but they learned to swim”) and memetic (“Play a sad song on a tiny violin“), its bridge given over to the bluntest stomp-clap revival yet lest the sadness feel too unrelenting. But it doesn’t quite irritate. Shaboozey’s mission is small-stakes smoothness, and “Good News” succeeds at that well enough to earn some goodwill. In an era as unrelentingly shitty as this, I can’t muster up animosity towards a song as efficient and modest as this one.
[5]
Claire Davidson: I knew I liked Shaboozey the moment I heard the line, “You want smoke, I’m the Marlboro man” on Cowboy Carter, but what’s frustrated me about his work is that, despite his genuine affection for country music, he doesn’t quite have the expressiveness to deliver songs that, by nature of the genre, primarily work best in broad strokes. “Good News” is probably the smartest possible solution to that dilemma, partly because it’s really just an inversion of “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” taking the hangdog disposition that anchored that song’s weary camaraderie and bringing it to the fore. Shaboozey portrays that beleaguered feeling well, but what really elevates this song is its production, opening the first verse with spacious, mournful pedal steel before gradually giving way to the fiddle, bass, and handclaps that culminate on the hook, providing the symbolic resolve needed to carry the narrator through times where even hope itself feels futile. For obvious reasons, I think we can all relate to that right now.
[8]
Dave Moore: Stomp, clap. Stomp, clap. Stomp, clap. Stomp, clap. …Hey. <wipes away tear>
[6]
Jeffrey Brister: Whoa-oh ascending chorus, slide guitars, that mid-’10s golden glow gang-vocal beauty that I find simultaneously annoying and incredibly endearing? Yes. Yes, please. I am a man of simple pleasures, and this gives me what I want. Is it durable? Hell no. There’s nothing sticky here, no bits to make it linger. Airy, light, and, not disposable, but ephemeral. A fleeting thing that checks some boxes and dissipates.
[5]
Taylor Alatorre: I like that the newest wave of rustic folk-pop — I refuse to genuflect to Spotify taxonomies by uttering “stomp and holler” — wears its conformism on its sleeve. It feels no need to project any bohemian bonafides by donning animal masks on stage or on album covers, or to rummage for some tenuous personal connection to sepia-toned Americana. No living music consumer has memories of the Dust Bowl era, but more than a few remember listening to “Dust Bowl Dance” on the bus ride to school, and “Good News” is apt to evoke memories of such times when the naïvely communal was recast as the achingly personal. Shaboozey is an earnest yet canny sort of populist who has his finger on the changing face of nostalgia; he knows that the right way to follow up a record-smashing J-Kwon interpolation is to humbly apologize for his own undeserved success, in a way that conveniently serves to remind us of and thereby ratify that success. As self-martyrdoms go, it’s not as moving as the one on “Finally Over,” which somehow managed to skewer his own stardom before he even had it, but the outward focus of “Good News” gives it a utility that extends beyond solo mope sessions.
[7]
