Making Country Music for Yourself: An Analysis of Four Great Country Albums
In which Beyoncé, Chase Rice, Luke Combs, and Post Malone exemplify the importance of making country music because you love it, not because you're chasing the bag.
This has been a bit of a weird year for country music, hasn’t it?
Last year saw country music at the most successful it’s been in decades. After over twenty years of no country songs going to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, suddenly there were four in 2023 alone, and one of them (“Last Night” by Morgan Wallen) ended up being the #1 song of the entire year. Even outside of those #1 hits, more and more country artists have been getting huge hits that matched or even excelled their pop music peers. On top of that, the independent scene was bursting with new talent that was being discovered on TikTok, Spotify, and Apple Music. Considering I started following country music about nine years ago, when country music’s reputation was at rock bottom and was barely getting any crossover hits, this rise has been bewildering to watch.
This year technically saw an even bigger year for country music. But it’s hard not to notice how many of the biggest country songs of the year came from pop music rather than the country music industry that made songs like “Last Night”, Luke Combs’ cover of “Fast Car”, and “I Remember Everything” by Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves massive hits last year. The biggest country song of the year was “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” by Shaboozey, a country song that took inspiration from “Tipsy” by J-Kwon of all songs and turned it into a semi-rap country bar stomper that probably wouldn’t have made it as far as it did if Beyoncé hadn’t platformed Shaboozey on her own country-inspired album, COWBOY CARTER. Post Malone decided to pivot from his pop-rock hooks of last year’s AUSTIN to a full-on country collaboration album. Where he got together with a bunch of Nashville artists and songwriters to make a whole album of pop-country hits, including “I Had Some Help” with Morgan Wallen which was crowned the “song of the summer” by Billboard. Speaking of “Austin”, Dasha was a pop artist from California just starting out and trying to find an audience and it was only when she pivoted to a pop-country sound when she finally found that audience thanks to her big TikTok hit, “Austin”. She hadn’t been affiliated in country music circles at all unlike Shaboozey, she just decided to make a country song with a choreographed line dance and got a Warner distribution deal out of it. Even Machine Gun Kelly is getting in on the country music action, fresh off of being humiliated out of the pop-punk sphere which he was only in after he was humiliated out of the hip-hop sphere! Surely, interpolating “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and getting a Jelly Roll feature (who seems to be willing to work with ANYONE) will get my career back on track, right? Fuck you, dude.
This is all not even taking into account failed attempts to pivot to country music like Yung Gravy’s trap-country album Serving Country (barf), or pop songs that advertise themselves as country songs like Sabrina Carpenter’s “Slim Pickins” and Chappell Roan’s unreleased country song “The Giver”. Ultimately, it’s obvious that country music has become the cool kid that trap music used to be from 2016-2020. To be clear, it’s not inherently bad for pop music to appropriate country music for their own gain. Pop music has done this for years now, and for the most part, the people within these industries don’t have a problem with it, especially not country musicians who will gladly lend their hand to the artists who offer them collaborations like Post Malone and Morgan Wallen or mgk and Jelly Roll.
I don’t even dislike a majority of the things listed above. I may despise mgk’s godawful song “Lonely Road”, but “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is one of my most played songs of the year and by extension one of my favorite hits of the year. I may have reservations about Dasha’s intentions as a pop artist hopping on the country trend in the most basic, uninspired, marketable ways, but the song itself I don’t have much beef with. It’s fine. Hell, I’m actually very excited to hear the official release of Chappell Roan’s “The Giver”! Her performance on Saturday Night Live was fantastic, and I can tell she did her homework and paid tribute to artists like Shania Twain in the composition and performance of the song!
That passion and effort is all I ask out of these pop-country crossovers at the end of the day. You want to make country music? Show me you care. Show me this is more than just an easy hit or you’re just trying to capture that Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan audience. Because I love country music. It’s one of my favorite genres because its storytellers can capture a feeling or paint a picture that few other music genres can. It has a long, vast history worth exploring that goes back farther than even pop music. Its simple, traditional, but beautiful use of music to tell these stories is very inspiring to me. You don’t even need to have a history with country music to truly take it in. I’m a queer Mexican who never grew up in the South nor was exposed to any country music beyond bits and pieces. But I still look out for new country artists and dive into old ones.
I wrote about four country albums that exemplified that passion and effort I want to see out of anyone in country music, whether you’re in the scene or not. One is a passion project from a music legend who took her negative experiences with the genre, explored its history, and made it into her own creation. Another is an artist I previously dismissed as a trend-chasing hack rerouting his career into something more authentic and worthwhile by leaving behind an industry that only held him back. Another album here is a spur-of-the-moment passion project born out of the artist’s personal journey as a father and how it inspired him to write some of the best music of his career without needing to squeeze in a radio hit. And finally, an extension of an album that would otherwise fall into the trend-chasing “pop turned country” flavor of the year, but a focus on the artist over his collaborators showed his true passion and love for country music.
Beyoncé - COWBOY CARTER
Plenty has been written about Beyoncé’s country album COWBOY CARTER already. Some of it I agree with, some of it I don’t. I’ll say right off the bat that this is a great album but for seemingly different reasons than what I’ve read from fellow critics and colleagues. There’s a lot of talk about the album’s innovation and cultural importance, especially as a black woman taking her dignity and power back from a genre that previously rejected her. It’s no secret that country music has a long, difficult, uncomfortable history of racism and misogyny, especially towards black women, then and now. COWBOY CARTER addresses a lot of that in the music itself, especially in relation to the American dream and the oppression black people have faced in aiming for that American dream.
In an Instagram post made before the release of this album, Beyoncé directly addresses the reason why she decided to make an album inspired and influenced by country music; when she was met with backlash by country music audiences for her performance of “Daddy Lessons” with The Chicks at the CMAs. It made her feel unwelcome in a genre she otherwise loved and grew up with, but from that rejection, she was motivated to look into the history of the genre and its cultural significance. From there, she made an album that challenged her to push against the limitations set upon her and make her own version of country music. I had mixed feelings on this post initially. While I empathized with the sting of that rejection and respected the research she made into the genre afterward, I had a bit of hesitance with the statement “This ain’t a country album, it’s a Beyoncé album”. It felt a little weird to make a note of putting research into country music and its history, aiming to pay its respects in your own way, only to outright remove the association from it by claiming it’s not a country album. Why pay tribute to a genre and challenge yourself to be a part of it and then try to claim yourself as transcending it? Plus, I wasn’t a fan of the publication writings that, in turn, used this to dismiss the genre and claim that Beyoncé was “saving it” by making herself a prominent part of it. Country music is already disrespected by a lot of entertainment media outlets as a lesser genre compared to pop, rap, and rock. I wasn’t a fan of seeing that happen even more so now that their favorite artist was the one making it.
The more I’ve sat with this album since its release, however, the more I start to look at COWBOY CARTER a little differently. It’s obviously not a traditional country album, it was never meant to be. But I wouldn’t call it a pop or R&B album either. Instead, the album is more of a montage of different stories and voices, both in terms of vocalists and the very people whom these songs are about. I like the radio framing that this album has as if it’s channeling through different voices and sounds that Beyoncé wears with ease. Getting the Smoke Hour interlude with Willie Nelson welcoming us in and telling us to join in and enjoy the music as they play the lead single “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” truly feels like riding out into the plains and tapping your hand to the wheel as your favorite song plays on the radio. That immersion into the album and its world is so cool to me! There’s no coherent story to COWBOY CARTER, but there is a great variety of sounds and styles that always keep you anxious to hear where else the album takes you. There are plenty of jams like “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM”, “BODYGUARD”, “RIIVERDANCE” and “II HANDS II HEAVEN”, but there are also some slower, more thoughtful songs like “PROTECTOR”, “16 CARRIAGES” and “II MOST WANTED” with Miley Cyrus.
My favorite stretch of the album comes right after Linda Martell’s interlude, “THE LINDA MARTELL SHOW”. Starting with the absolute barn-burning BANGER that is “YA YA”, easily one of my favorite songs of the whole year. Such an inspired combination of songs that turn it into this hillbilly rock and roll beast of a song that I couldn’t get enough of when it came out. Then there’s the cooldown into the brisk and groovy “DESERT EAGLE”, the infectious dance jam “RIIVERDANCE”, the blissful cruise into starry nights with “II HANDS II HEAVEN”, the fierce firestorm of “TYRANT”, all finishing off with an awesome three-piece suite of “SWEET HONEY BUCKIN’”. This section of the album is very exemplary of what I love about COWBOY CARTER. More than any conversation about its importance, the genre wars, or whether this album is truly “country” or not, Beyoncé uses her inspiration and personal drive to make what is essentially a whole production inspired by the history of country music, Texas, and her ancestors who fought to live here through their trials and tribulations. These are such radically different songs, and yet they all feel like they belong on this same album. They’re in the same world of cowboy hats, horses, and fierce American pride.
Is Beyoncé right in saying it isn’t a country album? I don’t think that matters at the end of the day. She’s made it clear she doesn’t feel welcome in the genre but has a lot of love and respect for it that she wanted to showcase through this album. This is why I’m not nearly as outraged as everyone else that she was snubbed by the CMAs this year. She doesn’t want, nor need their approval. They had record low ratings this year anyway. Nobody cares, not even country fans. At the end of the day, this album didn’t impress me because it was faithful, nor did I find it all that innovative in the context of country music. It impressed me because you can see a lot of effort and love that Beyoncé put into crafting this album and challenging herself as an artist. I don’t think anyone else could make songs like “YA YA” or “II HANDS II HEAVEN”, not even my favorite country artists. Plus, not a lot of artists have the resources and budget to make a passion project this big and sprawling. There are tons of collaborators on this album, both as features and behind the scenes. I could have used more people from country music itself, but I appreciate her bringing smaller names like pre-”Bar Song” Shaboozey, Tanner Addell, Brittney Spencer, Willie Jones, and Riannon Giddens on board. The mere fact that an artist is able to explore a genre to this extent and make something really unique and cool out of it should be celebrated! It’s not my favorite country album of the year, admittedly, but it’s one that I still kept coming back to even as the world seemingly moved on. I hope Beyoncé was able to feel creatively fulfilled with this album. If nothing else, I salute her for giving a platform to Shaboozey. I’d been rooting for him for a couple years now since I first heard “Beverly Hills”, and seeing “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” become such an inescapable hit was awesome to see, especially for a country song by a black person that takes influence from other genres, but is still quintessentially country. That shit matters.
Chase Rice - Go Down Swingin’
CW: Lyrical subject of one of the songs on this album involves rape and sexual assault. It’s mentioned here, but no explicit detail is present.
It’s taken a while for me to get to this point. Even just a year ago the idea of giving someone like Chase Rice the benefit of the doubt would have been absurd to me. Probably the biggest poster child of the bro-country movement, writer of the song that started it all (“Cruise” by Florida Georgia Line), and the artist behind some of the worst country hits of the past ten years. But something changed within Chase Rice throughout this decade. Several doses of reality and artistic clarity made Chase Rice realize how dissatisfied he was chasing the radio hit. To the point where he realized he was never really making music, he was just making hits. And in the past few years, he’s pivoted towards more of an outlaw sound that still had its fair share of radio-friendly hooks, but were much more ambitious in terms of sound and especially writing. Rolling Stone had a pretty extensive piece on Chase Rice and his journey to where he is now that piqued my curiosity. Chase Rice was so candid and honest about his history as an artist. He’ll talk shit about his old hits not because they’re terrible songs (they are), but because he knew it came from his desire to chase the bag rather than making something he was actually proud of. That first epiphany led to him making his big outlaw pivot album, I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell.
I’d love to tell you that this album was the one that made me start giving Chase Rice a chance, but in all honesty, I felt like it was all phony. It had an inflammatory title, the aggressive pivot into this outlaw image felt like cosplay at a time where outlaw country was gaining mainstream traction, and the fact that despite being traditionally produced and less processed, the album’s lead singles were still pretty schlocky and not on the same level as a Chris Stapleton or Eric Church. I was not impressed by “Way Down Yonder” or “Bad Day to Have a Cold Beer”. I still think those songs are pretty lousy and cynical. That said, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see glimpses of improvement from Chase Rice. I thought “Key West & Colorado” was alright, and “Bench Seat” still kind of impressed me as a genuinely good solo write. It’s a sweet song about a dog’s relationship with its owner and the life they lived up until the owner’s death. I remember thinking this was a really good start… but it was just a start. It’d take a lot more than one really good song for him to really convince me he was in it for the long run.
But it doesn’t matter what I think, because that song ended up impressing someone who really mattered to Chase Rice; Lori McKenna. If you’ve known me for a long time, you know how much I love Lori McKenna. She’s one of the best songwriters in the industry, and really country music at large. Clearly, Chase Rice thought highly of her too, and according to the above Rolling Stone piece, she had repeatedly turned down his requests to work with Chase, thinking he didn’t have it in him. That is, until she heard “Bench Seat” and acknowledged the work and improvement he put into that song. It led to her finally agreeing to work with him, writing a few songs on his next album and even featuring on the song “That Word Don’t Work No More”. Unfortunately, said next album would be Chase Rice’s first independent release, as Broken Bow Records ended up dropping him after I Hate Cowboys underperformed and everyone mutually agreed each party was looking for something different from each other. But it seems to be working out for Chase Rice, as Go Down Swingin’ was the album to really refine this new era of Chase Rice and hone his songwriting skills.
Go Down Swingin’ is far from the best country album of the year. While it’s easily Chase Rice’s best and most artistically fulfilling album to date, there are albums with more unique ideas and better production that beat this one pretty easily. But I also know that I’m a big fan of underdog stories, and seeing an artist I previously hated like Chase Rice really grow as a writer and performer and make something he’s truly passionate about has resulted in one of my favorite stories of the year. If I thought “Bench Seat” was a good start, many of the songs on the album are the GREAT songs I have been waiting for him to make. There are songs that just generally sound great like the blood-pumping gallop of “Fireside” and the gorgeous steel outro on “If Drinkin’ Helped”, but the writing is the area where this album really won me over. “That Word Don’t Work No More” with Lori McKenna is an absolutely gutting song depicting a married couple slowly falling out of love that ends in a quiet, somber divorce. No happy ending, no what ifs or what could have been, just a bitter, defeated, exhausted end. “Haw River” is the most daring song on the album, inspired by Chase watching the show 1923 and being horrified by the depictions of Catholic priests raping Indigenous women and the reality of that being a massive part of American history. “Haw River” has no interest in depicting the Catholic priests who commit these horrors as anything other than heinous monsters, and the final verse gives an Indigenous woman the justice she deserves by having her murder the priest in the same river he assaulted the women before her. It’s an incredibly dark and bold song for someone like Chase Rice to make. He likely couldn’t have gotten away with that while still on Broken Bow. The album ends with “You In ‘85”, which is a really lovely tribute to his late father (who appears on the cover of I Hate Cowboys), where Chase Rice reminisces on the time his father was at his prime in 1985, and the bright future ahead of him that he wishes his father could see come to fruition. This one’s another Lori McKenna co-write, which makes sense as Lori excels at parent/child songs. But she wouldn’t have been able to help this song take shape without the details and stories of Chase Rice’s father and his history with him. Even when he’s got help from one of the best, Go Down Swingin’ is Chase Rice’s album.
Chase, from artist to artist (though we’re in different mediums), I salute you in making the album you want to make and feeling artistically fulfilled by it. I’m looking forward to what you do next.
Luke Combs - Fathers & Sons
You’d be forgiven for either not knowing or completely forgetting that Luke Combs dropped an album this year. In all fairness, Fathers & Sons was never built to be as big and full of singles like Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old before it. Luke Combs himself explained that this album was made on a whim after he made a ton of songs about being a father, unsure if it’s even something his fans want out of him in comparison to his mainstream singles. In essence, Fathers & Sons is a passion project born out of Luke’s real life experiences of being a father and thinking about his kids. The production is mostly traditional, focused a lot more on the songwriting taking center stage while the guitars, drums and fiddles act as flourishes to Luke Combs’ words and stories.
“Front Door Famous” is a really sweet way to introduce the concept of the album. Another showcase of Luke Combs’ humility as he finds joy in the excitement of coming home to his kids after long trips away from home. Luke Combs has always been grateful for his success, but something about how little the fame and notoriety means to him in comparison to the smile on his kids’ faces when they see him coming through the front door is incredibly sweet. You can tell Luke has a lot of love in his big heart for his kids, but this album is just as much about his own father and looking back at the way their relationship has developed. One of Luke Combs’ biggest and best hits, “Even Though I’m Leaving”, was based more on a story idea rather than Luke Combs’ reality. Five years after that song, that reality is starting to creep up on him as Luke Combs contemplates the mortality of his father, and the stark realization that they might not have much time left. Fathers & Sons is a fairly hopeful and feel-good album, but there are still occasional spots of grief and uncertainty. The album even ends on a bit of a sad note with “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”, as Luke Combs tells the story of a kid deeply aware of their parents separating and latching onto the nostalgic memories of going to the baseball game like they used to as a coping mechanism. But even in the face of that, the album still has some optimism in its spirit. One of my favorite songs on the album is “Remember Him That Way”, where Luke Combs recalls just how much he looked up to his father when he was younger, but watching as he grows older and that spark is fading away with the passage of time. Regardless, Luke Combs holds that inspiration and admiration in his heart. In his mind, the S on his chest will never fade.
Luke Combs is an artist who really makes me smile. He’s such a sweet, humble guy and it always comes across in his music, but I think this album is where that aspect comes across the strongest. I think because being able to zero in on the concept of fatherhood was so personal to him, it makes these songs about his life and the things he’s thinking about feel very authentic and endearing. I’m someone who’s most drawn to the artist and how they put themselves into their art, and on this album I see Luke Combs more than anything. I really love his other albums. I’ll even say that Gettin’ Old remains his best album. But I can still see parts of those albums where it feels like he made something for the radio to latch onto. The catchy drinking songs that will always be a hit at his shows, the love ballads to his wife that color some of his biggest hits like “Forever After All” and “Beautiful Crazy”, he’s got a formula and he’s good at it. But Fathers & Sons feels really special because you hear so much more about Luke Combs the person as opposed to Luke Combs the artist. Something like “Huntin’ By Yourself” feels so different because it’s specifically about Luke Combs and his father’s love of hunting and the thought that one day Luke Combs might have to hunt for himself, without his dad beside him. “All I Ever Do Is Leave” is also such a specific song for Luke Combs. He realizes now how difficult it is to provide for your family, and that the resentment he felt for his dad always leaving them and never being home is suddenly something Luke himself is going through. Having to stay away for long periods of time and missing out on crucial time with his children just to give them a roof to live under. A tough, but necessary reality for entertainer parents. “Whoever You Turn Out To Be” really stood out to me as a reassurance to his son that Luke Combs will always support and love him, even if his path could diverge far from the way Luke raised him. That is an especially important trait for a parent to have. Speaking as someone who, to put it one way, deviated pretty far from the identity they were born and lived through childhood with, it makes me relieved to hear that Luke would accept that person if the same were to happen with his son.
The song that gutted me the most off this album is “Ride Around Heaven”. In the song, Luke Combs finds himself in a dream where he suddenly finds himself in his old grandfather’s truck and his grandfather is right there, taking a Sunday drive around heaven. He really enjoys the time he spends with his dream grandfather, catching up on everything he’s experienced and learned since his passing. I love the little details he gives about his grandpa. “With that Beech-Nut in his jaw 'neath the beard without no gray” is such a descriptive image that I can see the exact face Luke Combs is describing. At the end of the song, Luke’s grandpa drops him off and Luke wakes up genuinely really happy to have experienced all that. He’s not even sad that it’s over, he’s just grateful that it happened and that it felt so real. I have trouble listening to the song without getting a little choked up. Even just revisiting the song for this essay left me shedding a tear, thinking about the people in my own life I wish I could have that one last conversation with.
I’m really grateful that Luke Combs made this project. It’s not my favorite of his, I do think Gettin’ Old has the slight advantage, but it’s an album that I can tell was made with a lot of passion and inspiration. Luke was a bit anxious to send this album out wondering if any of his fans would even want to hear him sing a bunch of fatherhood songs. I mean, I myself am not a parent, nor am I planning to be one anytime soon. But Luke Combs is such a terrific entertainer with a personality I’ve always liked. Besides, it’s great to hear a major label artist confident enough to release an album with no commercial expectations. It’s for the love of the game, and the love of the life you live. I’ll hear anything he has to say.
Post Malone - F1-Trillion - Long Bed
The standard edition of F1-Trillion is… fine. There’s a lot of songs I like on it, not as many that I outright love. My problem with F1-Trillion boils down to one major issue; It’s less of a Post Malone country album and more of a contractual agreement between the pop music industry and the country music industry to make a big crossover album that takes advantage of both of their audiences. Post Malone has expressed wanting to make a country album for a couple of years now, naming indie country artists like Colter Wall and Tyler Childers as some of his favorites at the time. I don’t think it’s farfetched to say that Post Malone’s label, Republic, only agreed to let him do it so long as he fills it with collaborations of other Nashville artists to get an extra boost in sales. If you look back at his previous two albums, Twelve Carat Toothache and AUSTIN, they haven’t done nearly as well as his breakout albums beerbongs & bentleys and Hollywood’s Bleeding. The hits were starting to dry out, and it’s pretty clear on both albums that Republic didn’t have a lot of confidence in Post Malone returning to his peak as he follows his artistic voice over hits. So Post Malone gets his country album, but he has to work with Morgan Wallen, Jelly Roll, Luke Combs and all those big names so that people actually start paying attention again. Only three songs on this eighteen song album have Post Malone by himself. For the record, Post was clearly very happy to do this. It’s not hard to find interviews of these artists gushing about how friendly Post is and how incredibly enthusiastic he was about the music they were making. I’ve known that Post Malone has a unique passion and love for country music for a while now. You don’t cover early 2000s Brad Paisley songs and a song from Sturgill Fucking Simpson at a charity event if you were just hopping on a trend. But when I get the fabled Post Malone country album and it feels more like Ed Sheeran’s Collaborations No. 6, I’m left kind of disappointed and wishing Post was allowed to just make a country album. Not some pop concession for hits where his love of country music feels secondary to getting that coveted “song of the summer” title. After listening to the album the night it dropped, I went to bed a bit underwhelmed that a project that I was honestly looking forward to ended up being so disappointingly corporate.
Of course, I should have known what would happen the next morning. Post Malone is signed to Republic, the same label as Taylor Swift, who earlier that year released The Tortured Poets Department and followed it up mere hours later with The Anthology, an entire second album of songs from the same recording sessions. This proved to be massively successful and made The Tortured Poets Department even more successful and lucrative than it was already anticipated to be. Guess Republic figured they could do it again with their other big release of the year, F1-Trillion. Thus, it got a second album of nine bonus songs subtitled Long Bed, all solo songs with no additional features. This was… promising. Looking through the credits saw an additional amount of writers that caught my eye and I’d hoped that a whole section of the album dedicated to Post and no one else could probably elevate the album for me, even if this was obviously never gonna be as successful as the collaborations.
Long Bed really delighted me. It felt so much more authentic to Post Malone’s love of country music than F1-Trillion did. It’s a very simple, very straightforward collection of nine country songs written by Post Malone. It doesn’t innovate much, if anything it’s very reliant on song structures and instrumentation from the late 90s and early 2000s. It’s got fleeting fiddles, live percussion, twangy guitars and weeping steel guitars. Very bread and butter, but it still sounds pretty great all things considered! I have to give a shout out to Charlie Handsome for his work here. It doesn’t feel like pop music trying to pass itself off as country music, it’s very authentic to country melodies, textures and structure in a way I rarely hear from the pop acts who try to imitate it. Plus, the instrumentation he gives Post and Louis Bell’s vocal production is a natural fit for Post’s raspy howls. Post Malone’s Texas accent really comes through in these songs, and being given more room to dwell in the instrumentation makes these songs really come to life. He feels a little more restricted on F1-Trillion because so much of the writing is focused on the hooks and these big, explosive instrumentals, but on Long Bed the songs have a lot more room to really flesh itself out and find its stride. Big pop hooks are great for pop music, and there’s certainly some killer hooks on the standard edition, but for classic country songs such as these you really want to keep it simple and not overcrowd it with flash.
The writing really steps up on this album too. With a structure more built to let the storytelling flourish, we get some really great writing from Post and his Nashville writing collaborators. “Killed A Man” is one of the standouts on this album, seemingly about Post Malone taking another person’s life for vengeance but later you realize what’s being killed is the man Post Malone was when he was an alcoholic, recognizing the damage it’s doing to his life and taking action to end the cycle and start being a better man. “Two Hearts” is one of the best songs across both albums, telling a really sad story about a divorced couple and all the things split between them as they’re in the process of separating, including their confused children. It’s a really devastating song, and a lot of that is thanks to additional writing from Jessie Jo Dillon and her father Dean Dillon, two of the best songwriters in the country music industry right now. You have Dean Dillon to thank for a little song called “Tennessee Whiskey” you might’ve heard.
But even outside of stellar writing, the hooks on this mini-album are still great. My favorite song on the album as of now is “Hey Mercedes”, a lighthearted, fun flirtation with a girl at the bar where Post is so immediately enamored with her that he’s ready to spend the rest of his life with her. It’s such a fun, infatuated song that I found myself coming back to so many times during my late summer this year. I also want to give a shout out to “Go To Hell”, which is kind of similar to “Hey Mercedes” except the girl in question drives you nuts and you hate to love her. Lightly toxic to be sure, but it’s hard to argue when the song has such a catchy groove and a fakeout ending where all the instrumentalists go wild with honky-tonk chaos. “Ain’t How It Ends” wasn’t a favorite of mine at first, but it ended up winning me over with a ridiculously catchy and charming chorus. If they ever decide to release a song from Long Bed as a radio single, it’d probably be this one. I also love how the album ends with “Back To Texas”, a cheeky little ending where Post Malone decides his time in Nashville is done and he’s just ready to get back home. It’s got such a fun, bouncy groove and a sense of finality as Post rides away to the backing vocals singing along. It never fails to put a smile on my face.
I don’t love how we got here, but I’m glad that Post Malone was allowed to make an album like Long Bed. It’s not destined for the history books, it’s not gonna have the hits that F1-Trillion will have, but I can tell this was a really creatively fulfilling moment for Post Malone and it resulted in a pretty great album! It’s not gonna be among my favorite albums of the year, but you’ll probably see some of these songs on my year-end songs list. Albums like this remind me that above all else I love artists who enjoy themselves in their work. Regardless of what capitalism demands of them, when you can see an artist really shine through their work, that’s when I find art most rewarding. It’s what Post shares in common with the other albums I talked about on this list. Ultimately the optics of whether these albums will be “hits” or what they say about “the current moment” doesn’t matter to me as much as what I get out of the art and what the artist themselves gets out of their art. I’m glad Post Malone hasn’t forgotten that.
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