Don’t know what we got… seriously, we don’t know what we got here…
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[4.30]
Josh Langhoff: Kenny Chesney has four basic modes. There are songs where Kenny Chesney sounds like he needs to masturbate. There are songs where Kenny Chesney sounds like he has just finished masturbating. There are songs where Kenny Chesney sounds like he has not stopped furiously masturbating at any point since the recording process began. The rest is nostalgia. “‘Til It’s Gone” reads like a number three but hits like a four, Kenny anticipating the romance’s gone-ness like Brad Paisley in “Beat This Summer.” Unfortunately this romance has all the dramatic tension of a number two, but in its favor, it’s got zero of number one’s blowhardiness. Average all that up, convert it to base 10, and I dunno what the fuck you get.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: After the refreshingly low-key “American Kids,” Chesney returns to what brung him to the dance: this is not-bad but unexceptional Chesney-by-numbers, perhaps with slightly crunchier guitars than are his norm. Oh, and a nice coda, which gets him an extra point. At least it’s not bro-country.
[6]
Alfred Soto: The faceless face of homogenous midtempo country rockin’, Kenny Chesney has rarely sought a song that pulls anything but professionalism out of him. It’s like that’s the point. This one sports a not bad chuggin’ outro though.
[5]
Anthony Easton: I heard this in 1996, and again in 2006. It would make an excellent thirty year retrospective of a sound that’s precisely constructed and weirdly not that stale.
[4]
Luisa Lopez: There’s something a little dishonest — and a little dumb — in a guy using vanishing lipstick to tell a story about love, but whatever: there’s no harm in letting the fantasy persist. That fantasy here being this big-hearted little nothing of a song aspiring to the heights promised by one life, one chance / one ticket to the big dance. The best part is when Chesney comes back in after the lull and croons with surefire charm, You’re sure worth drinking to. Everything here’s already a memory, foggily recalled. It’s great, but it doesn’t stick around any longer than that lipstick did.
[5]
Micha Cavaseno: Wake me up when this song is gone.
[2]
Brad Shoup: It’s a song that exists to chase the sunset: the guitar steps up, the drummer pushes forward. Everything rotates around Chesney saying “’til it’s gone,” the first time like acknowledgement, the second like realization. But everything around him is as flat as heartland, and I can’t distill much from the drive.
[5]
Scott Mildenhall: Kenny Chesney sounds like a distant uncle that actually used to be in a band when he was younger. They weren’t exactly big time, but they did all the pubs in [your local area], and even now he’s always first up on the karaoke — “The Gambler” usually; come to think of it, always. One day, he’d like to visit Nashville, because as more than a stock joke character, he’s a human being with powerful loves and dreams. His voice and song are just slightly less so.
[5]
Ian Mathers: If that Tim McGraw song was a great example of something country tends to do well that’s undervalued, this is maybe an example of why the genre often gets undervalued/overlooked; it might as well have generic stamped on it in big block letters. I can’t remember a single thing about it after it ends.
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: Not bro enough for bro-country, not he enough for hedonism, not pretty or burly or memorable, not even that competent when you stare down the lyrics and voice. Not anything, really.
[3]