By Little…
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[6.00]
Michael Hong: It’s not that Little Big Town are “over drinking” but that Little Big Town are “over you.” It’s a clever little turn of phrase that the band doesn’t really sell with much conviction until the final chorus. But maybe “Over Drinking” is all the better played straight, as a gigantic country ballad where that rough guitar line counters the band’s cleaner four-part harmonies and allows for some final cathartic closure.
[7]
Will Adams: The rare “I’m over you” song that has none of the “(but I’m not over you I’m actually a little drunk right now and I’m going to text you against my better judgment)” subtext, “Over Drinking” rejects any preconceived pity its title suggests. But then why pair that concept with an arrangement and melody this sluggish?
[5]
Josh Langhoff: The duo Busby Marou released a chipper Thomas Rhett-sounding take on the “over drinking over you” conceit last year; now we just need Midland or someone to hop on the bandwagon (and off the wagon) and we can all start pitching trend-pieces. Yay! Busby made it a hot line but Big Town makes it a hot song, with that opening “Tennessee Whiskey” guitar lick and some sticky pedal steel. The song structure is brisk enough for radio, but the tempo lays squarely in the barroom weeper pocket. Both songs allow for over-thinking: Are the singers finished drinking over you, or are they unreliable narrators drinking too much, and “the boys” too polite/craven to tell them? In LBT’s case, the album sequencing of “Over Drinking” into the godawful “Wine, Beer, Whiskey” suggests the latter.
[8]
Brad Shoup: This has — and I’m not trying to oversell it, just trying to map this for myself — the draught-horse gait and breezy melodicism of I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. You could deduce the conceit from the title, but you couldn’t reverse-engineer its particular mixture of relief and regret. Do they carry the gag over the finish line? Not quite. But this’ll fill most rooms.
[8]
Juana Giaimo: “Over drinking” sounds so classic and polished that it is also quite boring. “I’m drunk ’cause I’m happy, not drunk ’cause you’re gone”, she sings, but honestly she sounds like the opposite.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: Love the opening guitar texture, love the waltz tempo, love the sentiment of this song — she’s not “over-drinking,” she’s over drinking (specifically, over you). And of course, Little Big Town being the drama-free Fleetwood Mac of country, the harmonies on this are gorgeous.
[7]
Alfred Soto: A decade ago, Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now” crossed over to become the drunk dialing anthem of the age. Little Big Town assemble their own, straining their often terrific studio rock in the hopes of enlivening their blah songwriting. I won’t change it on the radio because Karen Fairchild and Kimberley Schlapman’s harmonies convince me they’ve convinced themselves they’re over drinkin’.
[5]
Will Rivitz: I attended a talk given by the hosts of Switched On Pop a few Tuesdays ago. In the midst of an hour and a half on the fundamental elements that make pop music tick, the hosts demonstrated the Tin Pan Alley style of composing by creating a song in that vein on the fly: come up with a cutesy one-line lyrical conceit, figure out some rhyming words, fill in the remaining lyrics by buttressing the conceit around those rhyme anchors, and send the completed song out the door vacuum-sealed inside a three-chord progression. The hosts’ case for the form’s effectiveness is maintained by its continued adherents nearly a century later; “Over Drinking” is a one-line concept stretched to breaking over three minutes and change. That it plods like a drunk stumbling towards their Uber home doesn’t help.
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