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Grade: B
Country music has become the acceptable route through which American pop stars resuscitate their floundering careers: sales are down, kid — shove a fiddle in the next one. And a pedal steel. And git some of those country dudes to collaborate. Especially Dolly. But also Hank Williams Jnr, if you can. Makes them look hip, makes you look real down home.
So it is with the agreeably slobbering rapper Post Malone, born in NYC, raised in LA but here sounding like he jes swung in from some roadhouse barstool outta Shreveport, with bourbon and country blood trickling down over his stupid tattoos. His career has hit a hiatus of late and so this is an attempted revival.
OK, there has been some profitable crossover between country and rap and even EDM in the past decade and this album is by no means a complete failure. The Parton collaboration, “Have The Heart,” is a fine piece of country pop and has the only authentically country lyric on the whole album: “I don’t have the heart to break yours…” I also liked “Pour Me A Drink” until the shininess of the production got me down. That’s not country. It’s not even countrypolitan — that early 1970s crossover with middle-of-the-road pop. It’s just a modern corporate music product in a different wrapper.
There’s too much bombast, too much braggadocio (where country is generally self-deprecatory). Far too many words crammed into too small a space and far too few of them possessing resonance. Country music is about the gaps between the words and restraint. It is laconic rather than endlessly didactic. In the end, this is just spotless and tiresome adult rawk.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.
