Review Summary: Despite what the album title suggests, Luke Bryan doesn't know much about actually being country.
Luke Bryan's career began at the most opportune time possible. His previous studio album,
Kill the Lights, garnered
six number one singles, a record setting total for one country album. The final of those singles, "Fast", was certified Gold, even though Wikipedia believes the song has only sold 170,000 units; far less than
half of the 500,000 normally needed to achieve that certification. He gets to sing about having T-Pain and Conway Twitty on the same mixtape and deflowering girls under a full moon while under the veneer of being country. He sings these often cringeworthy hooks behind choppy beats, boring synths and cheap production value. To top it all off, the man is 41 years old and he's acting about half of that age. And with the release of his newest album,
What Makes You Country, he doesn't seem to be getting smarter at all.
Now, I'm the last person who would ever champion the ridiculous notion that today's stars
can't be "country" and that it's an honor and distinction preserved only for the genre's architects like Hank Williams Sr. or Johnny Cash. But Luke Bryan and the rest of the bros around him sing their songs as if the lyrical content is sacrosanct. It's literally all they know how to sing about. To be fair, Jason Aldean defended this phenomenon, stating that he can't sing about stockbrokers on Wall Street because he doesn't know "where the hell Wall Street's at." But something's still off. Luke Bryan's new album is called
What Makes You Country but it truly does not feel much like country at all.
Lead off single "Light It Up" is a good single choice and truly one of the better songs Bryan has recorded. The idea that the 41-year old Luke Bryan would clamor about a girl lighting his phone up is absurd, but the song is sung very well by Bryan, who can't be denied as a strong vocal talent, and the neo-traditional instrumentals do get a chance to shine behind undulating beats. The album's title track, however, is a poor attempt by Bryan to extend an olive branch to himself, conjuring up imagery of fishing and dirt roads in unconvincing fashion.
"Out of Nowhere Girl" is a flat out pop song and nothing else. Perhaps it would be wrong of me to judge and dismiss this song as "not country" after I just proclaimed I wouldn't uphold the notion that it couldn't be country. But when a chance to include a crooning steel guitar is traded in for boring and choppy synth washes, it's hard to not lend credence to it. "Most People Are Good" is another attempt by Bryan at introspection. He sings of his mother deserving sainthood and trying to see the best qualities in other people. But it's hard to leave any lasting mark on the listener when the hook of the song is sung so vapid and vacuous.
The adult contemporary pulse of "Bad Lovers" is suited for the composition and it's not terribly performed, aside from the
awful chorus. "Land of a Million Songs" is one of Bryan's best vocal efforts in a while and the more fluid instrumentals make a valued and needed return. But it's slim pickens for the listener; "She's a Hot One" sees a decent attempt behind the microphone, but poorly utilized southern rock undertones can't compete with the cheap gloss of the production. "Pick it Up" is hardly country, unless you award Bryan points for using his Tennessee drawl while "Hooked On It" toys around with sloppy riffs, despite seeming perfectly groomed for a future single release.
"Like You Say You Do" works because Bryan is more vulnerable and controlled in his approach. He seizes a perfect opportunity to stop carrying on about neon lights and start calling out his muse's current suitor for not being the man she needs. In what is another one of Bryan's stronger vocal performances, he takes an otherwise dead horse and forgives it with great execution. It's akin to a song like Clay Walker's "She Won't Be Lonely Long", only more sultry and refined. "Driving This Thing" is the buzzkill Bryan normally dreads facing in most of his songs; it isn't just overly suggestive; hell, it's practically a euphemism for a blowjob. "Win Life" doesn't fare much better to close the album with a jumbled tempo and wastes Bryan's solid vocals on unengaging instrumentals. With that,
What Makes You Country draws to a close.
After sitting through
fifteen new Luke Bryan songs, I was impressed by his strong moments vocally and utterly disgusted by the suggestive sultriness he tries to make coincide with what would otherwise be a neo-traditional identity instrumentally. There honestly isn't much to call "country" on here after all. This album will go platinum and plenty of songs on here will plant a flag in the summit of the Billboard Country Airplay chart, no matter how bad they are. If "Driving This Thing" impacts the airwaves, I can only imagine how many IQ points will be lost as a result. Luke Bryan is far from talentless. But as I stated at the beginning, there isn't much he and his contemporaries know how to sing about. And to make it worse, they don't seem like digging any deeper to find something new. Commercial, complacent and far from "country" is all you need to know to elucidate
What Makes You Country.
