Review Summary: A forgotten country heavyweight makes a sheepish return.
Rodney Atkins was a quietly prominent force at country radio in the aughts. His 2006 album
If You're Going Through Hell spawned four number-one singles on the
Billboard country charts, including consecutive year-end number ones with its title track and "Watching You." My dad and I always liked the latter. He maintained a presence at radio through 2011, and then just about completely disappeared. That is, until 2018, when the heavily pop-influenced track "Caught Up in the Country" strolled through. It spent over a year on the charts and still finished shy of the top 20, indicative of a time when artists who focused on older, linear formats really began to struggle to hold any footing in the mainstream. Atkins has tried his hand at a few different archetypes throughout his career. Early on, he donned a cowboy hat and sang songs that showed off a timbering baritone voice. When his career took off, he wore baseball caps and imbued his string of hit songs with an 'aw shucks' impishness that made the music feel more authentic than that of most of his contemporaries. Unfortunately, his niche as an artist hasn't aged all that well.
Mainstream country music has mostly devolved into a cesspool of reactionary defensiveness and downright dread directed at the outside world. To
hell with those city folk who don't understand what being 'country' is really about. Hey, I know my northeast Pennsylvania ass probably wouldn't last a day in a town with no cell towers, but at least I'm not kissing any fish. Some of the songs on Atkins' latest album
True South play like ChatGPT was asked to parody every male vocalist who polluted the airwaves with inane dribble in the 2010s, but its serious. The opening title cut is straight out of the Jason Aldean-"Try That In A Small Town" playback, replete with empty cultural signifiers, and a sense of entitlement that directly undercuts the 'down-home' modesty this brand of country typically posits for itself. If you don't cringe until your face freezes when Atkins waxes poetic about girls in 'cut-off britches,' you are too forgiving. A later track titled "Hole In One" follows a similar lyrical mold; it's Friday night, so you just know what's on the agenda - "Bud Lights tee'd up on ice" and so forth. It's a shame, because the popping piano fills make the instrumental pretty fun and Atkins gives an earnest vocal. At least he can chuffed to actually mean what he sings about, which can't be said for many of the male soloists dominating the format today.
There's a few other highlights on here, too. "Toys In The Dirt" boasts of some swelling fiddles that give the composition a lot of life and zeal. It's standard slice-of-life fare, but Atkins sells it. "Helluvit" has a decently constructed main hook that manages to compensate for Atkins' lack of range of belting ability. The music video, with its backyard wedding vignette, is pretty amusing as well. "The Years Are Short" will tug at any parents' heartstrings with lived-in passages that pretty squarely capture everything that comes with raising children. The guitar solo on the bridge is pretty purposeful, and Atkins pours his heart out as it treks to conclusion. He seems like a great dad. I'm sadly not yet one myself, but some of these lyrics feel very familiar in the best way. His wife Rose Falcon provides harmony vocals on "Believe Me" and their chemistry is palpable, even if the melody is a bit disjointed as it gets going. Suffice to say, Atkins' appeals to emotion have been largely hit-or-miss throughout his career, but this is probably the best ballad he's ever tackled. It certainly beats the pants off of his ghastly 2008 single "Invisibly Shaken."
The album closes with a reimagined version of his aforementioned 2006 smash "Watching You." The draw for this retread, coming nearly two decades since the original came out, is that Atkins' son Elijah, who appeared in the music video when he was just four years old, hops on the track with his old man and sings the choruses. Elijah, bless his heart, can't sing for f*cking sh*t. He drones vacantly into a void, sounding like a SoundCloud mumble rapper, not at all equipped to put forth the warmth the song is calling for. Rodney turns in a nice vocal, though, adeptly recapturing the magic from his original outing that makes this re-do an otherwise welcome catch-up with an old musical friend. Sadly though, the apple fell so far it became an onion. Dad really should have gone it alone, but hey, I'm sure it was meaningful to both of them to record, so I won't disabuse them of that.
True South is a mixed bag. When it's not playing to the worse impulses of what is most frustratingly common in the modern country zeitgeist, it gets its fingertips around some decent ideas and compositions. Atkins is not an eye-popping vocalist, but he's definitely more likable and palatable than most of the coconut heads experiencing success in the genre these days. Mid-00s country will always have a place in my heart, so I'm always interested in giving it a try whenever some of the hitmakers who flamed out come out of the woodwork, but getting me to revisit what they churn out today is a much taller older, and probably one I don't wish to fulfill.
True South is just a bit too boring and
average for me.
