So do this lot not use mirrors or what?…
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[6.15]
Martin Kavka: Attention musicians: are you searching for more interesting ways to react to being dumped than the standard please-please-please-take-me-back routine? Here’s one option. Against a cookie-cutter Nashville template, passively-aggressively imply that your ex’s new boyfriend is gay by focusing on his mustache. (With a mustache like that, he must wear a speedo!) Of course, you can’t actually call him gay, because mustachioed Alan Jackson is a good red-blooded straight American man, just like you. But making a joke will succeed in steering the conversation away from your own pitiful singledom. Indeed, since you just keep harping on about how he looks like a porn star — so talented in bed! so well-endowed! — the conversation will probably turn to how you must be the gay one. God, she was so right to dump your lame ass.
[2]
Dave Moore: I like the part where he adds the diplomatic qualifier “on some guys they look great,” but on the whole it’s trying too hard for… y’know, mustache jokes.
[5]
Iain Mew: Sorry but, however you push it, the mere concept of someone having a mustache is just not that funny.
[3]
Anthony Miccio: Country hack bandleader wishes he had Jessie’s girl, crying “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” over his rival’s oh-so-dated mustache. Goatees are cool, though – how else could he cover his double chin? – and a thoughtful aside makes clear he’s not ripping on Alan Jackson. Guess he must be singing about Kix Brooks.
[5]
Anthony Easton: The details, the writing, the guitar, the sense of humour, the sing along chorus, the vocal work, all sort it out to a solid 7 or 8. I sung along, I laughed, I liked the throw away Alan Jackson reference.
[10]
Michaelangelo Matos: Wait — aren’t country guys allowed to have mustaches? Even ones “straight out of 1979”? (I know, “Alan Jackson he ain’t,” but still.) Either way — wow. This was already up there for me by the time it got to the bridge of “Jessie’s Girl” with the singer muttering “Un-frickin’-believable” over it, but I cannot WAIT to hear this in a bar.
[9]
Chuck Eddy: Guitar riff has some “Summer of 69” in it, most strikingly around the two-minute mark when the singer says “unfreakingbelievable” — possibly even as much 1985 Bryan Adams hard pop as Rascal Flatts’s excellent recent “Summer Nights” has. And it should be noted here that Rollie Fingers, primary protagonist of the song’s ad-hoc youtube video, originally grew his handlebar just to secure a $300 bonus from Charles Finley, and was traded from the A’s the Padres in 1977. But in the photo I saw, at least one guy in Heartland has a mustache, too, if not quite a ’79 one. I think they secretly miss 1979. So do I.
[8]
Edward Okulicz: A good country song can be like a drink of whiskey to soothe your problems; this one is like having a wise-cracking sidekick telling you the guy who stole your girl is ugly and has VD, which is, surprisingly, much, much better.
[9]
Hillary Brown: There needs to be more eccentric country like this, especially if it reaches back to the same era as its subject for its riffs. I need to go dig out my best of Thin Lizzy.
[7]
John Seroff: ProTip: If you want to make a novelty song, there should really be some element of your song that’s novel. No such luck with this sour grape screed that surreptitiously (and without much benefit) borrows hooks from MJ’s ‘Dirty Diana’ and DLR’s ‘Just Like Paradise’. The nudge-nudge-wink-wink lyrics would sound weaksauce at a UT coffeehouse poetry slam.
[3]
Alex Ostroff: Light, funny and tuneful. Any other one-note joke would wear out its welcome by the midway point, but it doubles as a vital PSA. If “Mustache” draws even one person’s attention to the fact that most men cannot pull off awkward lip-adorning facial hair, it will have earned its
[6]
Additional Scores
Martin Skidmore: [6]
Kat Stevens: [7]