In 1954, an entrepreneur named Ray Kroc took a hamburger stand in Phoenix and transformed it into one of the most commercially successful enterprises in human history: McDonald’s. True, the business mass-produces garbage and killed a lot of people, but Kroc got disgustingly rich and famous.
In 1990, a singer-songwriter named Alan Eugene Jackson recorded “Here In The Real World,” beginning a 25-year-long career recording and performing music. True, most songs contained a maximum of four measly chords and revolved around a stale retinue of still-recycled themes, including sexism, religion, and—you guessed it—alcoholism, but Jackson got disgustingly rich and famous.
For the sixteenth time, Jackson has released an album of country songs—new country songs that are totally different from all of the other country songs that sound just like them. Wow!
If someone buys this album for you, it’s a trap! Kill your “friend.”
All you dudes who love country music (or say that you do, at least) are getting your feathers all ruffled already. Take it easy. The fact that you can read alone sets you head-and-shoulders above your peers. While this album isn’t any good, some country albums are, but not many recently.
Remember when the Dixie Chicks “went pop”? They were no longer “country!” The whole world was shocked! Because everyone thought they were just rednecks playing dumbed-down pop music. In 2015, country music is hard rock with a Southern accent, a twangy Telecaster, maybe a banjo or a fiddle, and that’s it. Writers are encouraged to use a maximum of four chords, and modulation is virtually forbidden. Songs can be about a number of topics ranging from domestic violence, substance abuse (“drankin‘”), automotive maintenance, working, not working, mysogyny (or misandry in the case of female writers), pets, church, guns, “freedom,” etc. There’s a small amount of creative leeway allowed for anything that might prompt the listener to take a shot, chug a beer, or yell, “Hell yeah!” Anymore, it’s watered-down sewage. Even real sewage packs some kind of punch.
The genre has become so utterly vapid that even country musicians themselves are making fun of each other, like Zac Brown taking swings at Luke Bryan, not realizing that he’s a clown fighting his own shadow.
For Johnny Cash’s sake, country “artists” are even having musical intercourse with bottom-of-the-barrel rap and R&B artists, like first cousins mating, spawning a deformed genre called “hick-hop” that will hopefully die sooner than later. At least there is none of that on this album. (Hence, the star.) Nor is there any bro-country. Can you imagine? “Frat Boys and Alcohol.” “Angels and Beer Pong.” Yikes.
Not surprisingly, the best thing about this album is the entourage of musicians (read: real musicians) behind Jackson. There are some incredible pedal steel, guitar, and fiddle solos on this album, and the drum and bass pockets are perfect. But to dwell on that would be like saying that you should get excited about eating at McDonald’s because Emeril and Rachel Ray are in the kitchen. And honestly, he’s simply bought himself an album at that point. With $75 million burning a hole in your pocket, I’d hope that no matter how hopelessly mediocre your talents might be, you’d still be able to purchase the right dudes in Nashville to record your music and make it sound good. Other than the session players, there’s just not much going on here musically. Frankly, the best thing about Alan Jackson’s “Angels and Alcohol” is that it’s only 39 minutes long.
This quaint little collection of carefully polished turds opens with “You Can Always Come Home” to the sound of a fingerpicked steel-string and cliché No. 1: “Spread your wings.” Ah, true wisdom. What wit, what poetry! The ensuing stanzas are no less painful. It’s like someone chopped up a book of aphorisms, line by line, put it in a blender, and reassembled it.
“You Never Know” is about “love.” “Love” is when your bigoted tendency to objectify everyone you see automatically kicks in at the sight of a young woman. Ask any married couple: There’s not much else to it than that. Lust conquers all! Who wouldn’t want to be stuck in a pubescent mindset at age 56? Yeehaw, y’all!
The title track starts slowly, and Jackson solemnly mentions God for the first time. It meets the criteria of a country song to a tee: three chords and the truth. This track would be great if the theme—that being a drunk isn’t really the best approach to life overall—were genuine. However, it’s hard to take a guy who’s built an empire upon the graves of dead alcoholics seriously. Dude is sitting right there on the album cover with a glass of something. Diet Dr. Pepper? It’s five o’clock somewhere in the afterlife too, right? Right!?
“Gone Before You Met Me” sits on the shelf with a host of other gimmicky country songs. Jackson fantasizes about stumbling upon the likes of Tom Sawyer and Jack Kerouac. It’s a little strange, though, as he abandons this shtick halfway through in favor of praising the bliss of domestic life—supposedly without the acute chronic alcoholism.
And now for the token song about a redneck pouting dejectedly at the bar because some woman is thinking about something in the universe other than him. “The One You’re Waiting On” is just enough of a boyish ego trip to be a country song. It’s funny how they start out as idealized goddesses, then they’re sliced ‘n’ diced into their respective body parts (tits and ass only, though—brains are disposed of), and finally they’re discarded in favor of the comforts of redneck life—be it guns, drugs, liquor, country music, whatever.
“Jim and Jack and Hank” is about domestic violence, materialism, and alcoholism. Jackson’s imaginary lady friend takes all of her things. Somehow, Jackson doesn’t care about the relationship he’s invested in enough to warrant cohabitation; he is satisfied that he has “Jim [Beam] and Jack [Daniels] and Hank [Williams].” Yes, liquor is truly all you need, Alan! You’re so wise! He drops Jose Cuervo and Captain Morgan in there as well. If you would like your daily dose of cognitive dissonance, do a web search for “Alan Jackson lyrics,” and look at the lyrics for this song, comparing them with the lyrics to “Angels and Alcohol,” wherein “You can’t change lonely with a bottle of wine.” Just wait! There’s a song about God later!
“I Leave A Light On” starts with all the musical cues you need in order to nonverbally scream, “Hey, it’s country music”: a tremolo guitar solo, the sacred number of chords (three), fiddles, a pedal steel, and waltzy drums. The topic, again, is “boo hoo, she left me.” Somehow, it never occurs to Nashville that ten bazillion songs with this theme is enough. It’s like it’s a crime to write about anything but only the most threadbare thematic rags.
“Flaws, everybody’s got ’em” is a great first line for a song about itself. As if it’s mandatory at this point for country songs to commit lyrical travesties, he drops the line, “You can bet your last two dollars / There ain’t no tens.” Groan.
Take a break from the barrage of mundane references to sex and booze so that Jackson can wax pious. At least Alison Krauss walks her talk. And such poetic verve, drawing a parallel between the divine and a painter! The fact that “When God Paints” is so stupid doesn’t come as a shock only because it’s expected of the genre to flip flop between glorifying reckless, irresponsible, self-destructive, or otherwise decidedly un-Christian behavior and doe-eyed, boot-licking religious tripe. If this song were written by Sufjan Stevens or Dan Haseltine, it would just be a really bad song without the glaring hypocrisy.
The final headache strikes with “Mexico, Tequila, and Me.” What do you think it’s about?
The old guys who wrote the first country music were uneducated blue-collar good ol’ boys, but they were genuinely those things, and what they wrote was a reflection of who they were. There was a real element of poignancy. But to simply imitate that and endlessly mass-produce it just to capitalize on it is asinine and antithetical to anything that might even casually be called art. This album is a pointless parade of tired bromides. Only those who rush to McDonald’s to try the new McRib (“Now less gross!”) should bother with Alan Jackson’s “Angels and Alcohol.” Keep your dignity and burn your money.
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