#1 in the country charts, #really far from that in our hearts…
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[2.67]
Jonathan Bogart: Somehow I think this kid and Qu Wanting would get along smashingly.
[4]
Anthony Easton: This is an excellent piece of rhetoric, working the culture’s expectations of femininity against the target of a seduction routine, and I can imagine it would be successful; girls would buy this boy’s records. The piano in the middle of the song is a nice touch. He’s really young though, so the performance seems to be a bit too burnished — rehearsed from other sources and other older workers. This isn’t a terrible thing: one of the ways to make work is to repeat mentors until you are ready to make work that features your own stories, and it’s a strategy that prevents the kind of problem that Taylor Swift is in right now. Though it does lend itself to a kind of studio-canned generic quality.
[6]
Josh Langhoff: I like Dann Huff and I like Hunter playing all the instruments himself, but I don’t see how anyone could listen to “Wanted” and not start making snarky jokes about wanted posters and the Wanted. And not even good jokes! Listening to this song is like being in school. Really sappy school.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: A dozen label people will spasm at once if this kid gets dubbed the “country Justin Bieber.” So fine, here you go; pry off the scare quotes if you must. The caveat: this is Hayes’ “One Less Lonely Girl.” And I bet “I want to call — you — mine, I wanna hold — your — hand” was a dirty joke in the studio.
[3]
Alfred Soto: “I don’t know how you do what you do” — yes, well, I expect you to tell us. You won’t get there by “puttin’ aside math and logic.”
[1]
Brad Shoup: Hayes sounds just like Gary LeVox. But compared to this, Rascal Flatts sounds like Discordance Axis.
[0]