Review Summary: It's a Kid Rock country album, how good do you think it is?
A few days ago I was asked, "what is your least favorite album of all time?" I pondered for a minute. Is it Lulu, the mess where Lou Reed and Metallica attempted to crossover? Was it a Blood On The Dance Floor album? No, I thought, those albums are awful, but there must be something worst. Then my eyes widened as if I had seen the gates of hell. I had completely repressed this album like a traumatic memory, and responded, "I think there should be something preventing Kid Rock's Born Free in the Geneva Convention.”
Born Free is a representation of everything wrong with the Kid Rock. Kid Rock has based his entire career off of being a trashy, cocky, trendy piece of human garbage. He rapped because it was the most profitable thing to do in the early 2000s and when country was the new craze in 2010 the toxic human garbage followed along with the trend. In retrospect, people should've seen through this vain effort to stay relevant. How could anyone believe a millionaire from Michigan (the most southern of states, right up there with Maine, Washington, and New York) is just a humble country boy? Alas, this album went platinum and was placed on Rolling Stone's top 30 albums of the year (jabbing at Rolling Stone is easy, but this is absolutely inept and hilarious).
The album opens with the title track "Born Free," and yeah it's a pathetic, pandering patriotic anthem just as one would expect. Boring instrumentals? Check. Kid Rock trying his best to sing, but still sounding like a dying whale because he has absolutely no talent? Check. Overtly cliche lyrics? Most definitely a check. The worst part is, it's the most tolerable track on the entire album. Every song is either Kid Rock attempting to be soulful even though he has literally no talent or positive qualities to do so or him being a trashy southerner. Neither of these mix and the both sides of the dichotomy are equally awful. The ballads are horrendous and no matter how hard Kid Rock tries to be emotional it just utterly fails. Sheryl Crow, a talented country singer for what she's worth, cannot fix the tepid slog that is "We Collide," but at least it's better than Kid singing by himself on songs like "When It Rains." Kid Rock can not sing when preforming a song with a serious tone because he sounds out of place and forced. It doesn't help the instruments are cut-and-paste, bland, and uninspired.
The party anthems don't fare much better, all of them reek of cliche and are seemingly only digestible by drunken mothers long past their prime (like all of Kid Rock's music come to think of it). "God Bless Saturday" are some of the most cringe inducing lyrics of all time. Kid just puts swear words in to sound edgy and cool. They're not just bad songs, they're so bad they invalidate his emotional songs. How could someone take Kid seriously with lyrics such as, "Because Monday's just a bitch / Tuesday's such a bother / Wednesday's like watching dead flowers grow / Thursday ain't for *** / Friday's getting hotter / But on Saturday night you know / We let it rock," is beyond me. If Kid Rock really wanted to create a down to earth and earnest tone with this wretched abomination, then why would he contrast this with trash, hollow party anthems? Is it merely because drinking a cold brew with the boys on a Saturday night rocking out to Lynyrd Skynyrd and bitching about how ***ty their work week was is a southern stereotype? Well it seems as though I've answered my own rhetorical question.
Born Free is so forgettable that it needs to be ingrained into a person's head to even be memorable, and that's precisely what happened to me.
My mother would play this album in her car when driving us to school. Everyday. For two years. The monotonous song structures, the horrific lyrics, the obvious pandering to a conservative, middle-aged audience I was forced to listen to endless times.
I would've rather listened to my mother and younger brother bicker at each other over listening to this incoherent mess of an album. Tell me to listen to this album one more time or get shot and I would gladly take the bullet. If all music is truly art, then Born Free is the musical equivalent of defecating on a canvas and spray painting a rebel flag in the corner. Thank you, goodnight, tip your waitress, this album is putrid.
