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Tim McGraw - Southern Voice
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American music has countless regional loyalties, from New Orleans jazzbos to the rappers who claim their coastal alliances almost compulsively, like beatboxing one-man chambers of commerce. But for pure prideful swagger, it's pretty tough to beat the South, y'all. The honky-tonking title single on Southern Voice, country superstar Tim McGraw's latest, name-checks nearly every famous figure born below the Mason-Dixon line, be it Rosa Parks or Will (not William!) Faulkner: ''Tom Petty rocked it/Dr. King paved it/ Bear Bryant won it/Billy Graham saved it.'' It's the kind of broad-strokes crowd- pleaser that doesn't work so well on closer examination (Pocahontas: Not generally known for her sweet-tea recipe). Still, McGraw, one-half of Nashville's reigning royal couple with wife Faith Hill, knows the platinum reach of his Everyman appeal. And he works it just as well on his rakish ode to a high-maintenance honey, ''It's a Business Doing Pleasure With You'' (''You got me walkin' past the fellas/Holdin' drinks with pink umbrellas/On some island that I can't even spell''), as he does on well-calibrated heart-tuggers like the mournful blue-collar ballad ''Mr. Whoever You Are.''...full text |
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| Nytimes |
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Michael Bublé is a master at juggling musical attitudes, and his new CD, “Crazy Love,” whose title comes from the Van Morrison song, is his most confident balancing act yet. Mr. Bublé respects the Sinatra tradition but doesn’t try to slavishly copy anyone. Appreciative of the past but not reverential, he juxtaposes pre-rock, rock and soul classics without favoring one style over another. Even at his most emotional, he still insists on having fun. The playfully bombastic opener, “Cry Me a River,” is a gargantuan enlargement of a classic revenge song usually sung by a woman. Both in the arrangement and in Mr. Bublé’s high-on-his-horse vocal, it comes across as a contemporary answer to one of Shirley Bassey’s stentorian movie theme songs, and knowingly flirts with camp....full text |
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| Latimesblogs |
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Tim McGraw sharply criticized Curb Records about this time last year for issuing a third "greatest hits" collection from the country star rather than release this album, which sat on a shelf for nearly two years after it was completed. McGraw sees this, his 10th studio effort, as a way of reclaiming his voice, and bucking the powers that be might well be one facet of that voice. If only more of that feistiness were evident in the songs he's selected. Things start out promisingly with "Still," by Lee Brice, Kyle Jacob and Joe Leathers. It's got a pulsating modern rock beat behind his Louisiana twang -- think of it as Coldplay with drawl -- but lyrically it digs a bit deeper than the melodramatic but superficial hits so closely associated with McGraw: "Don't Take the Girl" and "Live Like You Were Dying." Then Troy Olsen and Marv Green's "Ghost Town Train," about a long-lost love, taps the kind of wistful folk-country that brings Gordon Lightfoot to mind. The leadoff single "It's a Business Doing Pleasure With You," written by Brett James, Joey Moi and, of all people, Nickelback's Chad Kroeger, has some fun, as one-dimensional as it is, with the up-tempo lament of a poor schlub who falls for a gold digger....full text |
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