Not actually a really fun version of a Nirvana song…
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[6.00]
Thomas Inskeep: Dierks Bentley is so smart he can write a song sure to be loved by the bros titled “Drunk on a Plane” and simultaneously make it a heartbreak song — albeit one with lines like “got this 737 rockin’ like a G6.” He also rhymes “sexy” with “whiskey.” Of course, the catch is that he’s getting drunk on a plane because it was supposed to be his honeymoon. Bentley sells the hell out of this, and he’s a great enough salesman that you buy it.
[7]
Patrick St. Michel: This easily could have been just another Nashville-edition Mad Libs, “the gang is getting wasted in (location)!,” condescending to the junior off to study abroad who gets a little too excited about never-ending Bloody Marys. Dierks Bentley, though, makes the indulgence part of a narrative, a well-worn one but still better than hedonism on Virgin Atlantic. So “Drunk on a Plane” has a sad edge to it, but the trick is in finding a way to turn it into something ultimately celebratory and well-earned. As eye-rolling as the mile-high joke is, he also whips out “got this 737 rockin’ like a G6,” and makes it sound stadium-ready.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: Hey, an actual story! Even if it is “From Cayman Islands With Love.” This nonsense only works if you see the chorus as wish-fulfillment: buying drinks for everybody, getting some poor flight attendant fired for in-flight fucking, quoting “Like a G6,” lodging a beefy country chorus where it shouldn’t belong — market wish-fulfillment, then. The rest is instrumentation so cartoonish I’m surprised little drunk bubbles didn’t float-stumble out of the guitar neck — but it’s one of those cartoons that’s actually a little smart and sad if you think about it.
[6]
Brad Shoup: It’s a Penthouse letter in the sky, because someone commissioned that stunning fiddle yaw and didn’t stop to consider that it could depict a sad faded fucker at high altitude. Bentley goes for some of that “You Get What You Give” iambic tetrameter, turning heartache into entitlement like an Arizona State alchemy major. It’s a story instead of a portrait, and Lord knows country needs better versions of each.
[5]
Anthony Easton: The happy song about sad things, especially sexy sad things, is one of the things that Dierks does well. If the happiness/sadness works in conjunction with drinking, he is exactly in his wheelhouse, and in the current country landscape, the expression of more than one emotion suggests a greater level of both engagement and sophistication. He is really good at the drama and the pleasure. The Aerosmith guitar riffs, the grind of the vocals, the hints of Mexican horns, the music tilts and verges on collapse. That’s before the lyrics — and the lyrics are some of the best of the year. It is a perfect short story, with strong writerly details, good enough that it might as well be written by Tom T. Hall c. 1976. My favourite line is the one about cheap champagne in a real glass, which I will keep assuming is a metonymy of the problems of authenticity and authorship in nu-Nashville. My second favourite line is the one about the plastic groom, which is a self-aware continuation of the theme.
[9]
Megan Harrington: Tasteless, mostly harmless, terminally boring bro-country. I appreciate that none of its characters are being lured to a remote location after a thick application (or with the promise) of alcohol but I do sadly wonder why getting wasted and skirt-chasing women that are paid to be nice to you is a fantasy worth memorializing in song.
[4]
Alfred Soto: Huge congrats to whoever thought bending those strings for the requisite funny-sad mockery would make a shrewd effect. I want to think that Bentley and his writers, unable to match the precision of Brad Paisley’s plane song, watched Pedro Almodovar’s much derided but awesome plane movie (i.e. the real “Bottoms Up”). But swapping pickups for stewardesses is as easy as swapping spit.
[7]
David Sheffieck: The reason people travel with earplugs and eyemasks.
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