Anticipate Brad Paisley's "Wheelhouse"

From Rolling Country 2013:

What does everyone else think of the new Brad Paisley song with LL Cool J? I think it starts off OK, but LL's verse sinks it. Plus, when they start the choral part I just think it's a rehash of his last single, where they started singing "Dixie."

― 誤訳侮辱, Thursday, April 4, 2013 1:44 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hate that "Dixie" chorus so much.

― Heyman (crüt), Thursday, April 4, 2013 1:47 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hope I'm wrong but the first third of Wheelhouse is the dullest music Paisley's recorded in years.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, April 4, 2013 1:48 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have been way too afraid of that song to come anywhere near it. Still trying to hold desperately to my LL fandom but dude is making it VERY difficult (for about 15 years now).

― @GracieLoPan #fyi (Display Name (this cannot be changed):), Thursday, April 4, 2013 2:06 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can't decide whether Paisley's crazy Christians song relies on as many stereotypes as Tim Hicks' "Stronger Beer" does about Southern life, even when an expected lyric at the end acts as Paisley's escape route.

Here's my take on Paisley's Wheelhouse, to date:

"I knew it--"Those Crazy Christians" had to end up twisting the knife on the guy singing. Those crazy Christians are instead of being outside on a nice day are at the bedside of a dying friend, and, also, "What if they're wrong/right" line in there. Nice sound actuality of a church service in there. Paisley's Wheelhouse has some fun. vocal things at the first of "Beat This Summer" (the fun. vocal things happen again in the record). Glitch-country-rock-banjo thing at the beginning and throughout.

"Outstanding in Our Field" has a Roger Miller sample and a rock 'n' roll guitar lick. lines about Clara Belle and the cafe and the carwashing and the keg. "I Can't Change the World" finds Brad flipping channels while his wife is fixing a brick wall in the back yard. They kind of ripped off "Across the Universe" kind of extended-phrasing thing on the chorus--but he can change her world, just after she mixes up the Quik-Krete and makes dinner. Jesus will look down from the same level as the powers that be.

I do kinda like the electro-beat and mock-classical electric lick and the way the program music mimics the tension of the song, of "Karate." But here's an example of what's wrong with this record--OK, now would a guy really be "chasing" "Cuervo" and "Tecate" in a bar or is this a clumsy way of saying he's fucking around? No, he's really drunk and knocks her around. And wait, Charlie Daniels comes uneasy riding into the song. So it's a joke song about domestic abuse, fair enough, it's basically a comic universe...?

"Southern Comfort Zone" just also seems under-imagined to me. Paisley/DuBois/Lovelace call the South "the land of cotton" which is the wheelhouse of the title, "Dixie" is heard, Grand Ole Opry ads, and it's kind of like a bright tenth-grader creating his own Pro Tooled song at home about Southern Heritage, but tweaked by professionals, as in the chorus, which is about the only good thing about the song. The stealings from U2 or whoever are interesting. And "Harvey Bodine," Paisley/DuBois/Lovelace again, is another comic tune about dying, with whistles, and a defib machine, and I think you could maybe hear how the thing is just spoiled by what I perceive is an uncertainty of tone that pervades the whole album, and I'm sure that Paisley/DuBois/Lovelace had the idea of couching "Harvey" in terms of a Monty Python sketch. Taken piece by piece, some of this works, but the combination of whimsy and kitsch emotion is pretty hard for me to take. "Tin Can on a String" really isn't bad, Paisley/Ashley Gorley/Lovelace, pretty straight.

― Edd Hurt, Sunday, April 7, 2013 12:20 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink"

So basically y'all are saying he should probably put out another instrumental record?

he titled one song "I Can't Change The World."

"Outstanding in Our Field" is apparently a way for Arista to pull back on the social-message shit, it's just about them going out and burning truck tires in the hinterlands with their all-terrain vehicles and having a party. So it's like one part of Brad is still 22, the other is some guy getting nervous watching CNN or worrying that his demographic is aging after someone told him that the South will probably go for gay marriage in 10 years, plus "Karate" equals Brad cares about the battered of the world but advises them to defend themselves. Straight down-the-line mildly liberal Southern guilt kind of thing. "Accidental Racist" says that his generation did not start the troubles, but now, we must move beyond into what's left is Southern pride, also, he does not want to keep walking on eggshells. So maybe he should just go around calling Darius Rucker a nigger, because black people say it to each other all the time.

I have some of the same problem with another son of the South, Quentin Tarantino, in Django. But Tarantino is a masterful dramatist if nothing else, so the scenes where Samuel Jackson is a darky apologist for the oppressors who turns oppressive himself, once he's out of the glare where he doesn't need to dissemble, are pretty savage, and say something about a viewpoint of Southern history that Paisley's song is far too timid to even sidle up to. But Tarantino, like Paisley, just seems to have had trouble distinguishing between genre exercise and something a bit deeper, and if Tarantino's cruelty seems gratuitous in his film, the acting and some of the psychological insight is superb. But in music you can't really dramatize in this way, and formally, Paisley just gets trapped time and time again--incongruity (to my ears) between pretty cool licks/groove/sonics and the actual words (notice the credits--I think Paisley had these ideas, and Lovelace and Gorley and DuBois got called in to make it more palatable) gets me down every time I try to listen to it.

Terrific posts so far, Edd.

Yeah, totally.

It sounds like Paisley's ambitions are getting the best of him not least because he's not ambitious enough.

yeah holy shit on the paisley / LL duo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_qbt1EVuw8
um

bless his heart

whooooops i'm racist

What the heck is going on here?

http://24.media.tumblr.com/aa7d7099482126f7560a0124f1b9bafa/tumblr_mi696wc0UQ1r9edzqo1_500.jpg

jumping the shark

http://noncochlearsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Yves-Klein.jpeg

Tom Breihan, on Twitter: "Braid Paisley is gonna feel dumb when he realizes he should've just covered 'Guilty of Being White' with Body Count." I actually think that would have been pretty great.