Meanwhile, here’s Ian Mathers with the Jukebox’s annual culinary lesson…
[Video][Website]
[4.42]
Ian Mathers: Jarlsberg is a traditional, creamery, hard, Norwegian cheese. The world’s most famous “Baby Swiss”, Jarlsberg has the consistency texture and hole formation of Swiss Emmental but its flavor is more nut-like and sweeter. The paste is golden yellow with holes of various sizes. A full wheel of Jarlsberg weighs about 20 lbs., one tenth the weight of a wheel of Emmental. Jarlsberg can be used as a table cheese, dessert cheese or sandwich cheese.
[3]
Alfred Soto: We get it, Blake: meeting Miranda was the high point of your life. It would be the high point of mine. Stop singing mush.
[4]
Jonathan Bradley: The tongue-tied introduction (“keep it real, like, chill, like”) is unconvincing and unnecessary from someone as smoothly genial as Shelton, but he makes up for it with a chorus expansive enough to accommodate pleasingly overstuffed lines about “the middle of a moonlit Chevy bench seat” and the almost passable euphemism “a little bit of country song.”
[7]
Josh Langhoff: To the slowed-down riff from “Leaving Las Vegas,” Shelton sings an endearingly smarmy collection of pickup lines for a guy who no longer gets to use ‘em, except when he and the missus spice things up by acting out their fantasies, many of which end in gunplay and tragedy. The spell is broken by the chorus, where power chords spill beer on everything and “little bit of country song hangin’ on” demonstrates how rusty he’s gotten.
[7]
Iain Mew: I want to go along with this, especially with the guitar. There’s just something very dislikeable about the way that he sets out his fantasies and then throws in “have a night that you‘ll never forget”, a particular type of self-delusion last seen in Jason Derulo’s tragic “In My Head”.
[4]
Scott Mildenhall: “Crawly Maybe.”
[4]
Brad Shoup: The sentiment is pure barroom creepery until the utter condescension of the phrase “pretty pink lemonade shooter”. Jesus, Blake, buy the lady a beer or just stare at your own. The combination of drum machine and movie strings comes off like someone recalling the idea of Eric Church after a week-long bender.
[3]
Rebecca A. Gowns: I like the cheesy fingersnap beat. “You don’t have to throw back your pretty pink lemonade shooter” is a weird, funny little line. It sounds super typical-country in one sense, like, Steel Magnolias, Crimes of the Heart, Southern debutantes being effortlessly charming while also trying to get Blake Shelton to stop talking to them. But in another sense, it’s a weird little line; it stands out when you hear it, and it stands out when you write/read it. I think it’s 1) the possessive “your” and 2) a string of violent and girlish words strung together like beads on a friendship bracelet in an old dude’s country song. I am nonplussed.
[5]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: I wonder if Shelton was aiming for smooth with this single, because the entire song comes across as extremely goofy, from its gee-golly title to the awkward “keep it real, like, chill” bro talk that opens the track. What strands it in no-man’s land is his vocal performance, which lacks any astonishment to motion that the prospective make-out session at the centre of the song is really happening. Or exciting, perhaps.
[5]
Will Adams: “I mean, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” your friend says, handing you a flyer for his upcoming poetry reading. “But it’d be really awesome if you came!” You half-smile and take the flyer. When your friend walks away, you look at it, sigh and stuff it into your back pocket.
[4]
Anthony Easton: As much as I appreciate the low-key, well constructed, pretty smart sensitivity of Shelton’s best work, sometimes he coasts.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: You don’t have to put in effort during this Voice-buffered stage of your career, but it’d sure be cool if you — oh, what’s the use.
[3]