Countrypop Life 2: Killing time

Look both ways before crossing over

If I was going to do this again, I wanted to stick to themes, so everything here either hit top three on Billboard Country Albums or is from a recent major CMA winner (no Americana, no Sabrina, no Grupo Frontera.) Given Lana’s Lasso is still being threatened, I might pass on Countrypop Life 3.

Post Malone: F-1 Trillion

On each of the collaborations with a good artist, you wish it was solely by the good artist, while the collaborations with bad artists are just bad. Only two tracks, both on the subject of taking responsibility in relationships, demand further elaboration. On “I Had Some Help”, Posty and middling artist Morgan Wallen are gifted the year’s catchiest song, and they don’t make a hash of it. Both have plenty of experience with the public non-apology apology, and an admission of even a teensy share of the fault is contrite by their standards. “Hide My Gun”, featuring Hardy, is the year’s worst song. In addition to the immortality, the mawkishness, the inept vibrato, and the stupidity, it’s unchivalrous—if you’re going to shoot someone, hide your own fucking gun, don’t make your girl an accessory to murder no matter who spitballed the idea. It’s enough to make you doubt that Hardy has ever actually lynched anyone.

Grade: C (“I Had Some Help”)

Shaboozey: Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going

If nothing else, this’ll make you appreciate how lucky we got with Lil Nas X.

Grade: B MINUS (“A Bar Song (Tipsy)”, “Drink Don’t Need No Mix”)

Zach Bryan: The Great American Bar Scene

The major improvement from Countrypop Life 1 is in the tune writing. True, he’s most comfortable within a couple of tones of his central note, but with a fanbase that hangs on his every word, he’s learned that he only needs to make his brief excursions outside that range count to make each track distinct to them. This also creates something to grasp for those of us with no special affection for Great Plains small town dives (perhaps because the last time we walked into one, the Beautiful Losers therein looked at us like we ate their cat and we left immediately.) So do the guests, sometimes: John Moreland is spiritually correct; the version of “Pink Skies”, his best song, is botched through no fault of Watchtower’s; and if he’s not much worse a singer than Bruce at this point, he and his band aren’t nearly as well-versed in unsmoothness as 1975 E Street. He doesn’t need my faint praise; he needs either Jon Landau on quality control or another ten years’ practice to be excellent. In the meantime, the main career danger of a fan base that hangs on every word is drunkposting things like “Kanye > Taylor”, a minefield of a comparison on music alone (email votes in the upcoming Semipop Life Artist of the Century poll will be tabulated in confidence.) The Swifties will let you off in exchange for a Harris/Walz endorsement, I conjecture.

Grade: B PLUS (“Memphis; The Blues”, “Like Ida”, “American Nights”)

Lainey Wilson: Whirlwind

She’s the country establishment’s current One Woman Allowed, more than Miranda and Carrie ever were: at least they had each other. To express gratitude for getting her Downtown Nashville bar, she obliges biz expectations by surprising nobody. Compared to Bell Bottom Country, the returns on Jay Joyce’s high-tech retro approach are unreliable—what’s with the trashy-sounding synthed-up guitar stabs, e.g. at the end of “Call a Cowboy”?—and since variety-show corn isn’t Wilson’s silo, she doesn’t ironize “Counting Chickens” like Dolly or Sabrina Carpenter would. Nevertheless, with few exceptions (even by the standards of Kids Say the Darndest Things songs, “Whiskey Colored Crayon” is Ruthkanda levels of risible) it’s easy to listen to, not least thanks to her sprightly regular band—one of the Nolan brothers brings his djembe—abetted by all-star ringers, and when she gets to do her strength-in-heartbreak schtick, you remember it’s the flexibility of her singing, varying her degrees of attack and tunefulness, that earned her her spot in the first place. It’s just that how to get the most out of her might not be among the things a man oughta know.

Grade: B PLUS (“Broken Hearts Still Beat”, “Hang Tight Honey”, “Ring Finger”)

Beyoncé: Cowboy Carter

She doesn’t need country and country doesn’t need her, so measurements of the biz’s precise racism level are better calibrated elsewhere. More answerable is how much of this is any good; my estimate is somewhat more than half. Rewriting “Jolene” as a tribute to Jay-Z’s steadfastness isn’t the only travesty, not when Miley reminds you that country travesties are the Cyrus family business, and the attempts to make a significance sandwich out of the unrepresentative parts of her biography (the billionaire parts) aren’t helped by having a production kitchen more overstaffed than The Bear in season one. And yet anyone who’s a quick-draw on the skip button should be impressed by the sheer professionalism on display. The too-big-to-fail settings make the year’s two worst breakout outlaws (see upcolumn) sound like they deserve the CMAs they’re banking on. And while Bey will never let us forget she’s one of our great popular singers across genres, she’s also proud to be in a tradition that includes Linda Martell, not to mention Tina Turner: one that the crew she assembles on “Blackbird” are more invested in continuing than she is.

Grade: B PLUS (“Ya Ya”, “Texas Hold ’Em”, “Sweet Honey Buckiin’”)

Carly Pearce: Hummingbird

After starting out as a Busbee-powered hopeful within spitting distance of Maren Morris, she’s grown into Nashville’s arch-conservative—musically, I mean; don’t ask don’t tell otherwise. On the sequel to her marriage-divorce album, she’s still plenty sore though no longer as solid blue as her Levi’s, and is content to submit her creations to Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne’s doctoring and effective trad production (best-in-town fiddler Jenee Fleenor’s flourishes are outstanding.) With the biz, having considered her for their One Woman Allowed, deciding to look elsewhere, there’s one radio-bait Chris Stapleton duet and the rest of the time she’s here for the art. Pearce tries on tricky structures, like the chromatic descent of “Woman to Woman” that indicates her ex is bound for hell and/or a Motel 6. And there’s plenty of prime wordplay, like “Fault Line”, which stomps around unafraid of the ground opening up beneath her (Satan begone, this ain’t California.) With no overarching concept, more variety would’ve been nice—maybe one day she’ll recognize her roots on the pop side of the countrypop fault line. But it’s hard to quibble with all fine songs, all sung well.

Grade: A (“Fault Line”, “Woman to Woman”, “Still Blue”)

Megan Moroney: Am I Okay?

On her second record, Sonymoth tames her perverse streak, unless it counts as perverse that she isn’t permitted to complete the phrase “he’s good in bed” in 2024. If you can live with that, this is an improvement on Lucky, foremost because of her singing. She’s dramatically increased the engagement her pan-fried drawl has with her material: the unadorned piano ballad “28th of June” would’ve been beyond her an anniversary ago. With a singular voice, writing that conceals how clever it is, a knack for a punchline, and a very un-Zoomer public confidence in her looks to the extent that she can be phlegmatic about losing a guy to Miss Universe, it might seem her only worthy aspiration would be Dolly, except with country radio retrenching to a No Women Allowed equilibrium, she might be rushing crossover sooner than she career-planned. The seeds are in place: “Hope You’re Happy” plays out its conceit at least as well as Olivia Rodrigo did, while “Noah” is a blatant Early Taylor boy song that would’ve been above average on greatest of countrypop albums Fearless. When becoming the heir to one of your genre’s icons is Plan A and Plan B, you know that UGA’s Music Business major has served you well.

Grade: A (“Noah”, “Hope You’re Happy”, “28th of June”)

Miranda Lambert: Postcards from Texas

Her Lone Star State album (and her first off Sony imprints since she was a teenager) isn’t that different from her recent work: everyone involved has done their time in Greater Nashville no matter how dry a town they grew up in. Still, there’s a sense of space here that’s off-limits to machine singers except on non-canonical excursions like The Marfa Tapes. A couple of pro forma rockers aside, the acoustic instruments are given bandwidth, which in turn means the vocals don’t have to fight to be heard (guest Parker McCollum sounds relieved that he can just sing like a chill guy.) Song for song, this doesn’t match Hummingbird or Am I Okay?, but old hand Lambert, assisted by co-producer Jon Randall, has a rare gift for pacing a 45-minute album. The torchy and serious “Run” is followed by “Alimony”, a Hemby/McAnally goof (relying on a pun that dates back at least to Dick Van Dyke) that some might’ve treated as a throwaway and which Miranda ensures is as least as important as any other track. To finish, she covers David Allen Coe’s “Living on the Run” and bottles the elusive outlaw sense of independence without having to murder anyone. Who knows how long she can keep this up—perhaps until she covers the wrong Coe song. For now, she’s enjoying the right to make superb records nobody expects to get higher than number twenty as much as any freedom she’s had.

Grade: A (“Alimony”, “Living on the Run”, “Run”)