The Singles Jukebox

Johntroversy.

[Video][Website]
[3.57]

Alfred Soto: He’s a joker, a smoker, and an all day power broker of trends, past and present. For too long Urban has epitomized a sunbleached blandness, offering a country experience that’s the equivalent of a weekend at Universal Studios. This time, although he’s traveling down a boulevard of broken dreams he’s riding a John Deere and remembering the Johnny Cougar he grew up with. But his soul needs saving? It’ll take more soul than he’s selling.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: Keith Urban goes Mraz/Thomas in his approach, name-drops a lot of cultural signifiers. Doesn’t sound all that awful while doing it. Also doesn’t really leave much else left to say.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Writing shit about Keith Urban is the only thing I have done professionally that has gotten me genuine threats, and so I am always a bit worried about unleashing. I love this song, because it is terrible. I love its blankness, and its cynicism, and how stupid it is. I love that the writing is so absurd that it is almost a joke, but not a joke on purpose. I love that his voice is getting blander and blander. I like the flop sweat here, and am even more amused at the potential that this is not really a flop. As a cultural artifact that functions as a kind of barometer for the desperation of some Nashville execs, it’s a 10. As a song, it is worth a 0.
[0]

Thomas Inskeep: Keith Urban: great guitarist, more supple vocalist than fellow ‘slinger Brad Paisley, knows his damn way around a love song. And sometimes he gets the uptempo ones right too, like this one. It’s an odd one, too, because it’s much more country in tenor and lyrics than it is in instrumentation. The drum machine absolutely works, the weirdly funky bassline works, the lyrical conceit (especially the title line) works, and I’m not just saying the last one ’cause I’m an Indiana boy on an Indiana night. 
[8]

Josh Love: Essentially, this is the aural, Australian equivalent of this. Urban’s been a country star for so long now that initially it doesn’t seem so incongruous to hear him rhapsodizing the America of yesteryear like so many other practitioners of his genre before him. Then you learn Urban didn’t even move to the U.S. until 1992, so all this seeming nostalgia is both a generation and a hemisphere removed. Somehow this feels worse; an ode to a simpler America when might and white were right delivered by a homegrown country artist at least holds the internal logic of suggesting the singer reaped the benefits, but by the time Urban washed up on these shores for good, Mellencamp had already dropped the Cougar, Marilyn was 30 years dead, and Kris Kristofferson had earned second billing in a Pee-wee Herman movie.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: Lookie: the Platonic ideal of country song titles. I’m in fucking awe. I want to hang this title in my house as a shrine, which I’m sure I can actually do because John 3:16. The song’s jaunty enough; it also quotes “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” which makes me come up with alternate titles of this ilk. Green Day, Green Gartside and Greensleeves? I’d listen to that. Over this, anyway.
[4]

Brad Shoup: I guess he’s right… how can you grow old when you’re already rotting? Literally every reference on this smash-and-gabber is way past its expiration date, either as a cultural force or as fodder for songwriters. (Surely the Gibson namecheck is native advertising, not an endorsement.) The redemptive power of rock, the idea of careful consumption as rebellion, the thought of putting Keith Urban on a track whose most notable instrumental moment belongs to the bass… who’s buying this shit? Certainly not Keith. In what I can only describe as half-hearted desperation to put this mess over, he swipes from Everclear’s playbook and grafts in some tepid cheering. Hey y’all, here’s a moldy reference for you: motherfuck this and John Wayne.
[0]