Just a bit of scruff on his chin, a cowboy hat, tall frame...Jason Aldean could be taken for a country music singer any day of the week. But his astounding success in the world of country music is likely to surprise anyone. He's had twelve number one songs in his nine year old career, and every song he's released in the last six years has either gone gold or platinum. His first track, Burnin' It Down, is the first from his new album called Old Boots, New Dirt, and the success it's found is astonishing.
Not only has the tune become the fastest song of 2014 to be given the platinum label, but it's managed to spend (I'm not kidding with this) 13 weeks at the Number One position on the Hot Country Songs chart. A song that has those kind of records to its name surely must be some kind of musical touchstone, right? Well, no, not really. It's not bad per se, and considering how huge Aldean is as an artist, the songs success doesn't shock me in any notable way. But it is mildly surprising a song so middling has found such, to put it lightly, success.
The songs primary conceit is a simple one; Aldean urges his lover to spend a night of passionate romance with him in which they'll "burn it down". I'm not 100% sure what the titular "it" is, maybe the night, but it doesn't really matter. What the song really wants you to pay attention to is Aldeans seductive vocals, which have the singer channeling his inner Barry White. But frankly, Josh Turner has kinda cornered the market on "Country music Barry White", and Aldean can't compete.
His vocals lack the passion of the likes of Turner or White, and at times he seems to be straining himself to actually add any conviction behind the lyrics. Amazingly, it took four people to write this thing, one of which was Tyler Hubbard, one of the singers of Florida Georgia Line, which comes as a surprise to me considering how weak the lyrics are. Similar to the vocals, they don't offend or anything like that, they just aren't particularly memorable or have any true emotion behind them. They also have a tendency to repeat various words (i.e. one passage goes alone the lines of "You know that I love lovin up on you), which wouldn't be a problem except the song pulls the trick so many times in a middling manner that it becomes irritating.
But to be fair to the song, the instrumental portion of the song is kinda unique, it's the most notable part of the song that managed to stick in my head. It's not some big stinker that tarnishes Aldeans career, but it did make me realize it's been two years since his last song that had any kind of uniqueness behind it, Fly Over States. Considering how much cash this songs made, I get why he does more forgettable stuff like Burnin' It Down, but surely his names a big enough draw now for him to do something memorable in country music again without damaging his financials.
No comments:
Post a Comment