Rising Canadian country…
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[5.45]
Alfred Soto: If there’s something about the kick drum drummin’, can I hear a kick drum? Can I hear evidence of excitement?
[4]
Thomas Inskeep: This gives me the same vibe as Luke Bryan’s “I Don’t Want This Night To End” – about late-night drivin’ around in a truck with someone attractive in the passenger seat – only a little more innocent-sounding. I’m a sucker for songs about the radio, too, and this recent #1 on the Canadian country airplay chart scratches that itch so well. Kissel’s delivery is earnest enough to make me believe him.
[7]
Megan Harrington: To recall a moment from earlier this year that generated a lot of conflict over whether the song’s narrator was full of it and dealing in stereotypes, at least Michael Ray tried to show her a good time in order to get that morning kiss. Kissel’s fully aware he didn’t do much more than show up and soak in it, chalking up all his one night success to the jukebox. It’s supposed to be sweet and aw shucks, but all I hear is a humblebrag.
[5]
Micha Cavaseno: I mean, +1 for having such a weird concept as “It can’t just be me man, the way the engineer set up that snare drum has got to be what’s getting my lady friend to suddenly find me desirable”; there’s a Hunter S. Thompson rant that I’ll never ever read in that train of thought for sure. But otherwise this stuff is pretty stock.
[4]
Jonathan Bogart: For an old pop sentimentalist like me, it’s pretty hard to go wrong with an ode to the magic of radio.
[6]
John Seroff: Showing that Canadian can-do spirit, ‘Airwaves’ strives to prove that if Taylor won’t make pop country, pop country will remake Taylor: more nasal, more trite, marginally more butch than ever. And yes, the team nails the signature phrasing (“igottageteverybitofwhateveritis she’s FEELing / cuz this FEELing”), the crystalline nostalgia-for-the-now, the watertight production. What’s lacking, what’s never missing in Swift’s best, is the vulnerability of an inward looking eye and the tricky specifics of love’s gaze; the object of Kissel’s bland affection is as insubstantial as a lit flame. Our everyman narrator presumes universal empathy for a hero entranced by the feminine mystery, but all the anonymous Boys of Summer together can’t make me give a damn about a princess sketched in air.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: Canadian-made store-brand Luke Bryan: actually slightly tastier than the real thing!
[6]
David Sheffieck: Gloriously, unabashedly on-the-nose: that AM radio vocal effect on the penultimate chorus’s vocal is pure delight, and it’s perfectly in keeping with a track that uses radio reception as a metaphor for the thrill of physical attraction. The production’s fun throughout, punctuating “Must be something in the guitar strummin'” exactly how you’d hope, and Kissel makes lines like “She’s dancin’ around like a lit flame/ Hand out the window like an airplane” sound as packed with meaning as a first kiss.
[8]
Brad Shoup: I can practically hear Brett strapping up for another backroad courtship entry. He’s too much of a pipsqueak: not sharp enough to navigate the pop cadences, not old enough to know which images to fill in. The only flash evinced by the band is a few tom hits thrown into one channel — there are a few synth suggestions, but they’re all ceding space to a guy who can’t pronounce “DJ”.
[2]
Crystal Leww: Songs about music are great, and even better if that music is a metaphor for love. “Airwaves” doesn’t quite get exactly there, but Kissel chooses instead to explore how we closely associate music with memory, specifically memories about his girl. It’s light, poppy and fun; I like how it taps the brakes for a quick second in the chorus before blasting off again. Pop country has been so strong this year that Kissel’s track honestly doesn’t stand out between the likes of Sam Hunt, Maddie & Tae, and Michael Ray, but this fits nicely into the playlist.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: Here, readers, is some proof I’m not totally a joyless gargoyle who hates fun and boys. Instead of itemizing the same traits of the same stock Southern sororitypes — tan, blondeness, ass in jeans, check check check — and expecting girls to swoon, Kissel here is totally crushed out on the sheer joy she’s feeling: half awe, half subtext that that joy is not yet for him. The formula reveals itself — the arrangement is no departure from anything, “pretty painted finger” is a phrase no man in the history of dating has deployed about his date, and “something in the air(-waves)” was sitting in a songwriter’s notebook for months, I guarantee. But Kissel’s delivery is so puppy-dog besotten, so early-’00s-VH1-love-song (the radio filtering toward the end is a nice touch) that you want to give him a hug and start shipping him and his girlfriend. It helps that he’s not singing to her — there is no seduction, no implication. It’s almost certainly an act, but the act is seamless.
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