Love is a drug…
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[5.43]
Katherine St Asaph: Ell isn’t a singer-guitarist so much as a guitarist-singer; the riff and chords are great, but as a vocalist she doesn’t offer much besides scrunching the odd phrasing (“nuuu I wuun’t”) I’m a bit bothered by the information disparity if you take these country love singles together with their bro-country counterparts. The girls are moony and headlight-eyed but essentially confused, fetching-clueless, “thinking crazy things, don’t know what they mean”; whereas the boys know exactly what they mean and planned the outing in the truck so they could best get things there. But more bothersome is how, if Ell’s tripping on anything, it’s the ends of lines.
[5]
Alfred Soto: The guitar crunch mitigates the confusing chorus — I’m not sure inserting “trippin’ on us” into workaday scenarios works each time.
[6]
Mallory O’Donnell: About as tripped-out as any typical trip to your local mall in 1997 could trippin’ well be. Even Ell sounds as equally bored with the clunky cadence of this chorus as me.
[2]
Anthony Easton: The best country chorus this year, with enough verve that it might be perfect to line dance to. The verses do not match the tight perfection of the repeated trippin’, but little could.
[8]
Scott Mildenhall: Sometimes, when hearing the appealingly wonky aspects of country music — some of the voices, the guitar here that would sound just as at home in a Turkish Eurovision entry — it’s easy to forget how mainstream it is in some places. That wonkiness isn’t really wonkiness, it’s just the angle it’s used to operating at, and so is no guarantee that the crux of a song in its sphere won’t be completely bland. In other words:
[5]
Brad Shoup: I dunno if this is a compliment, but her guitar’s speaking Semisonic until Solo Tyme. I’m 60% sure there’s singing on this, but even if I’m wrong, it’s fabulous hearing pop pyro wedded to a buoyant tune, rather than yet another tailgate growler.
[7]
Juana Giaimo: Lindsay Ell is good at copying all the tricks from Sheryl Crow except writing good songs or lyrics.
[5]