He’s wearing a hat, so it must be true…
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[5.62]
Jonathan Bogart: I keep making definitive, no-exceptions statements about country music, and I’m always wrong. Mr. Paisley knows the subject better, no doubt, but does that make him any righter?
[3]
Anthony Easton: In America, loving Jesus is basically required by the dominant culture. It is not a subversive act.
[7]
Michaelangelo Matos: At first I figured this as a sop to the faithful, who deserve it; they knew about him before I did, you know? But the more I hear it the more I imagine he’s laying out the terrain for his crossover audience as well. Doesn’t mean anyone has to start liking “God Bless the U.S.A.”, thankfully.
[8]
Alfred Soto: You indie palookas suspicious of country — the sexiest, slyest bastard in the bizness has your number. When he’s in peak form the solos serve the song. Here his guitar can barely wait to get through the banal chorus before buckin’. Speaking of awkwardness, which is worse: the references to Merle, Johnny, et al in the last minute, or the part about his mother dying not rendered as a funny enough joke?
[7]
Martin Skidmore: A list of things about country that aren’t hip, bravely daring to speak up for Christianity, the US of A and Momma, all with the usual contemporary C&W soft rock treatment. I think it needed a lot more wit or anger to make this work, but his light, pleasant voice probably couldn’t support those much anyway.
[4]
John Seroff: Another sturdily built populist list song of slippery slope jingoism from the master of the art. Who among us doesn’t like to drink a cold one on the weekend? Or want to tell our boss to take this job and shove it? Or think that Jesus isn’t a dirty word? Or stands by the principal of American Exceptionalism? See, This Is A Carefully Calibrated Sort of Country Music that presents compassionate-conservative middle-class middle-American values as intrinsic to the style of performance as the banjo and tosses in a nimble-fingered Guitar Hero solo just to ice the cake. Short on subtlety, poetry and spontaneity but long on bombast, formula and pride; the irony is that “This is Country Music” would fit in better on The Great White Way than cozied up against Merle. Now THAT’s what I call country.
[5]
Chuck Eddy: I was always fairly skeptical of Brad before I finally gave in to his last couple albums, but man, even I didn’t think he had it in him to come up with horsecrap this pandering. “A Country Boy Can Survive”? “God Bless The U.S.A.,” for God’s sake?? The dude’s management must be real scared that all those tea-partying yokels who hate him for liking Obama would stop filling seats. He’s sure lucky he can play guitar; if not, he almost would’ve thrown a goose-egg here, even if there’s some truth in it: Right, not heard many Auto-tune raps about Afghanistan lately. But I still want to know what country hit about cancer he’s thinking of. Must’ve missed it.
[4]
Josh Langhoff: OK, YES, it’s utter horseshit, at best an empty writing exercise, at worst a self-correcting sop to anti-government types who roll around on Medicare scooters and clamor for Obama’s birth certificate. The idiotic first line could keep us busy all day. The invaluable Leo’s Lyrics yields 1,019 songs that mention cancer, only two of which appear to be by country artists — David Allen Coe’s “Heaven Only Knows” and Travis Tritt’s “Bible Belt”, if you’re curious. Rap and metal artists get to say the word “cancer” in songs all the time; Neurosis, Carcass, and the Subhumans seem to have weird but unsurprising fetishes for the subject. He might as well say you’re not supposed to say the word “cancer” in a COUNTRY song, and there’s a good reason for that: aesthetically it’s a bad word for the genre, violating the usual subtlety and craft that go into country lyrics. If Tim McGraw had just plopped a “cancer” into the beginning of “Live Like You Were Dying”, it would have violated our subconscious expectations of country songwriting and broken the song’s spell. So Paisley’s a liar and a thief, but here’s the thing — he and Chris DuBois are good enough songwriters that THEY FIGURED OUT HOW TO DO IT. It’s not breaking-the-fourth-wall momentous, but this “cancer” is a sign of Paisley tossing off undeniable skill, the same skill he uses to divide country subject matter into three neat verses, to stick all his rhymes like a gymnast, and to play a guitar that sounds more conscious than most singers on the radio.
[7]