The Singles Jukebox

I think they’ve covered everything except playing with it and eating it.

[Video][Website]
[3.33]

Alfred Soto: This song zoomed 40-1 on the American country chart and all I can think of is this tune.
[4]

Stephen Thomas Erlewine: FGL ruled country in 2013 with party songs plus that one ballad–all single about girls and good times, so the time is ripe for the duo to prove that think about serious things, such as this great land of ours from which all good things come. This slow, studied sobriety isn’t the only distinctive thing about “Dirt.” The other, the one with short hair, sings a verse but he along with his fellow are both overshadowed by JD Souther spouting off such nonsense as “You don’t have to see the world to be worldly. Just raise some good children and bake good enough pies and the world will come right to your kitchen window.” This is straight-up bullshit coming from a singer/songwriter who fled to LA the first chance he got but it suits a song that rhapsodizes new constructions that can be bought with 10% down. Like a McMansion, it’s all facade: it might look good at a distance but even a cursory glance reveals the shoddy construction that will make it seem older than dirt within a years time.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: I am six years old and I am going to ruin this song for you. Suppose the title, “dirt,” is a frat-bro studio Easter egg, and the whole song is a double entendre. Press play, ponder lines like “you get your hands in it, plant your roots in it.” Get yourself well and good into that juvenile mindset. Now imagine: The entire song is one big grandly paced buildup to “you know, you can’t fuck it.”
[1]

Anthony Easton: I wonder how much of this track will sell to people who grew up in parking lots and concrete and only drove in dirt from bible study to Wal Mart to school. I want to hear the stories of those, more than the (quite well written, a little musically anemic) ode to the same old nostalgia. 
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: This is a song that requires you to watch the video, because without the additional storyline this is literally a song about dirt. Yet unlike similar songs focused on specific elements, this is as boring as…well, you know. 
[2]

Megan Harrington: These lyrics sound so badly lost in translation. How did this go from being a “build your love on” dirt song to a “I’m in love with” dirt song? The sickly background vocals are so bizarre they’re almost hilarious, the word “dirt” cooed like it’s your baby’s nickname. Florida Georgia Line are on the verge of becoming the most misunderstood band since Creed. 
[3]

Brad Shoup: You also name your Alice in Chains records after it. This has the determined paddle of the Mountain Goats’ “Against Pollution,” but only one man’s bray lands the cross. It’s a triumph of country songwriting, assuming that the writer(s) didn’t pencil in a guy whispering “dirt“.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Yeah, we get it, dirt is life. You came from it (sex education really must be bleak where these dudes come from) and you’ll return to it, and ostensibly live on it in the middle of those two things. But evidently you can’t celebrate it; musically, this is as stodgy as it comes. Weirdly, they sing “dirt” with the fondness I normally reserve for a sandwich with three different kinds of meat on it. Dare I say this is what the narrator in “Fly Over States” is thinking when he’s being told how great it is to settle down?
[4]

Crystal Leww: This is what authenticity sounds like!!!!!1!
[2]