Toby Keiths New Song Brings Together Booze And Patriotism

I kinda owe my whole obsession with country music to Toby Keith, a guy I grew up listening to whose music was a constant fixture in my household. How Do You Like Me Now?!, Courtesy of The Red White And Blue, and especially I Wanna Talk About Me were songs I heard endlessly and adored. What's great is that those songs hold up wonderfully as an adult. They remain not only great to listen to, but also have great lyrics and tackle some nicely realized situations unique to country music.

Keith remained a prominent fixture of country music, and the world of music at large, for the first decade of the 21st century, but as the 2010's began, he experienced four songs in a row that failed to hit the Top 10. He decided to pull out a patriotic tune, Made In America, to help boost his career, which worked like a charm. Recognizing his patriotic songs (the aforementioned Courtesy and the Willie Nelson duet Beer For My Horses) have been some of the biggest in his career, Keith has now played a similar tactic after several underwhelming songs and unleashed Drunk Americans on the public.

Combining two major fixtures of his discography, patriotism and alcohol (counting this song, five of his six most recent songs have dealt with booze. Is it time for an intervention?), should make this a song that's desperate with a capital D. But weirdly, the song actually turns out to be a decent listen. It's not as good as some of his past songs, but this thing surprisingly holds up on repeat listens and manages to say a thing or two of substance.

The title of this song, Drunk Americans, refers to a state of intoxication whereby peoples differences melt away. The song makes sure to list off various groups of peoples that have quarrels, like Republicans & Democrats or sports teams fans (which unfortunately includes Keith singing the name of a certain Washington football team with a racial Native America slur for a name), and then showing how the presence of booze manages to get them to come together. It seems a little bizarre to think that some drinks will immediately get rid of any sort of problems that people have with each other, but the message of unity the song preaches for is done in an  effective manner, especially in a passage towards the conclusion of the tune.

That particular passage of the song is where Keith observes "...we sing it wrong, but we all sing along", a nice way to note how we'll always have flaws, but perhaps it'd be better to have those flaws together instead of letting them tear us apart. It's a great moment of mature perspective courtesy of songwriters Brandy Clark, Bob DiPiero and Shane McNally. Keiths vocals also help sell that moment of thoughtfulness and the song as a whole, making my early concerns that this would just be a retread of his 2003 song I Love This Bar. It's not his best, but not only is it great to hear songs from Toby Keith with more energy and passion, it's nice to see him be a part of stuff like this that's actually pretty good.