Country’s crossover heroes, somehow…
[Video][Website]
[5.00]
Jessica Doyle: Monroe is a former cotton mill town about a 75-minute drive from Atlanta; Ormond Beach is a tourist haunt of long standing on Florida’s east coast; there’s likely a lot more difference between the two than this video would have you know. But bland seems to be the order of the day, what with the narrative so stripped of specifics the songwriters couldn’t even bother to name which country song is playing on the boombox. I was so hoping for a tongue-in-cheek rueful story of nice country boys getting sucked into debauchery during the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party; instead I get a forgettable Chevrolet commercial. Guys, couldn’t you have gone with Kia? They’re at least local, what with that plant over near LaGrange.
[3]
Alfred Soto: As rote as Kenny Chesney and recent Toby Keith, but none of these guys have sent singles into the top five of Billboard’s Hot 100. This should teach you something about marketing.
[4]
Anthony Easton: How much money do you think that Florida Georgia Line got for the Chevy reference? Do you think it was more or less that they paid Nelly for taking the last single from alright to brilliant? Perhaps they should have used that money to hire someone else, maybe do a kind of boys’ version/girls’ version mutual harmony with Azealia Banks. This is hermetic and terribly boring, and I want someone else.
[5]
Brad Shoup: The banjo and vocals deliberately paddle the length of the song; I get the sense of an industrial machine assembling music on a conveyor belt. Let the scene of country lovin’ fade and focus on the steady production of vowel sounds: short As and Es pushed out at regular intervals. It’s mesmerizing, and I wonder if these songwriters acquired highway hypnosis on their way to the backwoods.
[5]
Patrick St. Michel: “Round Here” is all about women, booze and trucks (we’ve written about three Florida Georgia Line singles so far, and each one has a prominent shout out to Chevrolet), yet this is by far the best song they’ve done yet, because they manage to make these tired tropes sound so irresistible. Save for something about an “all-night kinda kiss,” the words on “Round Here” flow into one another smoothly — “and that fireball whiskey whispers” bit in the chorus is great, though the sing-song delivery of “and Jesse’s gettin ready/I’m gassin’ up the Chevy” is by far the prettiest and most sentimental detail they’ve recorded.
[7]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: A celebration of rituals: lighting candles, blasting boomboxes, rising suns, moons fading, passing shots around, clocking in/out, the art of peacocking. “Round Here” doesn’t feel lived-in — something about the vocals sounding more like stage charm than real charm, that synthetic-sounding organ — but second-hand recollection that’s been passed down replaces it.
[7]
Jonathan Bogart: So I’m parsing the chorus correctly, you twist off the cap and then everyone drinks from the same bottle? People don’t get their own individual beers? You do it like dumb, disease-riddled teenagers round here.
[4]