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John Rich - Son of a Preacher Man
| Slantmagazine |
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i rarely remember my dreams, but one of my recurring nightmares involves this video from National Geographic, in which just 30 giant Japanese hornets descend upon a hive of 30,000 bees and proceed to use their huge, razor-sharp jaws to cut every last one of the bees apart so they can then fly off with the insects' children and devour them. Change "Japanese hornets" to "John Rich," and then replace "hive of 30,000 bees" to "everything I value about the concept of art, including the idea that popular music can, at its best, serve the same exact functions for those artists who demonstrate both an awareness of self and craft" and you'll have an idea of the type of unholy hell-plague that Rich's Son of a Preacher Man represents. Shameless in its pandering, hypocritical in its would-be persona, and inept in its contemptuous abuse of almost every basic element of song craft and performance, this record should finally put to bed Rich's real-life retelling of "The Emperor's New Clothes." I say "should" because I have no real delusions of that actually happening. The album's second single—a desperate, last-minute addition to the record after its first single tanked at radio—is rapidly on its way to becoming Rich's first solo #1 hit. While there's something to be said for topicality, in that it can give popular music an of-the-moment relevance and can spark serious conversation, "Shuttin' Detroit Down" is so superficial and so awkwardly written that it does nothing to elevate the remainder of the album or counterbalance some of his other songwriting misfires. That the song resonates with a wide audience at this time of economic hardship isn't difficult to understand. But the song is hamstrung by its simple-minded over-reliance on straw men: At no point does Rich attempt to identify the "they" who are closing down vehicle assembly lines in Detroit or to figure out why this situation has played out in the manner it has, and instead he blindly points fingers at bank executives and politicians. That he also equates New York, a city of some eight million people, with exactly one quarter-mile strip of commercially-zoned real estate only perpetuates ignorant stereotypes and class conflicts (and it's worth mentioning that no one has ever referred to the Big Apple as "New York City town" outside of needing to force this song's not-all-that-complicated rhyme scheme)....full text |
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| Allmusicguide |
| Given the gonzo strut of Big & Rich, it's easy to forget that John Rich is a Nashville vet, a former member of Lonestar who failed as a solo artist before striking gold in a duo with Big Kenny, another failed solo artist. Big Kenny's brawny vocals disguised how Rich was a blank, colorless singer and that lack of on-record charisma was apparent on Underneath the Same Moon, a solo record so bland it laid unreleased for seven years, not seeing release until 2006. By then, Rich was omnipresent on the country charts, not just as half of Big & Rich but as a producer and writer for many other artists, a quintessential behind-the-scenes kind of guy, instrumental in getting hits made. Anybody with that kind of pull would eventually want to strike out on his own, particularly someone who wrote a piece of braggadocio like "Everybody Wants to Be Me," one of the party tunes on his second solo album, 2009's Son of a Preacher Man. Such grandstanding is familiar territory from Big & Rich but Son of a Preacher Man isn't meant as B&R without Kenny: it's designed to be a piece of rabble-rousing populism, songs for and about the common man. Rich started down this path with his 2008 campaign tune "Raising McCain" as ground zero, dishing out silly simplistic puns over a set of pounding arena country, and he ramps it up tenfold here, lamenting the implosion of the auto industry on "Shuttin' Detroit Down," shoehorning Jesus into two different songs, and celebrating the Greatest Generation on "The Good Lord and the Man," asserting that "we'd all be speaking German, living under the flag of Japan" if we'd lost World War II. This lyrical nonsense goes a long way to explaining everything that's wrong with Son of a Preacher Man, how Rich trades logic (why would the Japanese want us speaking German, anyway?) for the lowest common denominator, pandering to an audience he's already won. This isn't merely cynical, it's often carelessly contradictory -- it's hard to slam Wall Street execs on one cut and then boast about your country bling on another -- and, worst of all, poorly executed, with all the tunes for the common man lacking the big hooks that made Rich's previous hits hard to resist. Pro that he is, he does manage to carve out a couple of moments that showcase his skills, and it's telling that they're the ones that stray from the empty bluster and drippy love tunes that characterize the album: the title track strikes a nice, relaxed Marshall Tucker Band vibe and the closer, "Drive Myself to Drink," is a fun big-band send-up. But even these are hampered by Rich's distinct lack of charisma, which is what truly sinks his faux-populist rhetoric, because there are few things less effective than a big talker with a small voice....full text |
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| Barnesandnoble |
| The cowboy-hatted half of multiplatinum country stars Big & Rich leads off his solo disc with "Shuttin' Detroit Down," a populist screed against corporate greed and the taxpayer dollars that fund it in 2009. Given the tip of the hat by The Hag himself, Rich's latter-day "Okie from Muskogee" fronts a record that's more traditionally country than his work with Big Kenny....full text |
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