The Singles Jukebox

I don’t know the difference between a snapback cap and others, actually!

[Video][Website]
[5.58]

Crystal Leww: It sucks that country withdrew into itself in its preference for the “traditional” sounds of folks like Chris Stapleton and Jason Isbell in late 2015 because acts like Old Dominion are expanding what country music could make listeners feel. Producer McAnally reportedly played Taylor Swift’s “Style” to draw out a pulsing 80s performance from the band. While I can hear the pulsing of the keyboard and drums, “Snapback” is also nothing like the glamorous nostalgia of “Style” — it sounds intimate, youthful, and fresh, a festival tune made for summer, down to promises of midnight selfies and the detail that she’s checking her makeup in his Raybans. It’s absurd to think that only whiskey-drenched brand of country contains emotion worth expressing; songs like “Snapback” feel like the exhilarating promise of new love. 
[8]

Taylor Alatorre: One of my songwriting pet peeves is when the second verse is unceremoniously chopped in half in order to get to the chorus faster. It reeks of audience pandering and radio programmer tyranny, and it’s sullied some otherwise great songs for me in the past. But the way Old Dominion perform this trick — “and we got the beat, let’s drop it,” bam! — is the kind of arrogant genius that would make Kanye proud. They know the chorus is catchy enough to justify such mercenary efficiency, and they know that we know it, so why not dispense with all pretense and give the people what they want? It also winks at EDM in a way that extends naturally from the selfie-referencing lyrics; sneaks in a Go-Go’s reference that fits right in with the propulsive synth bass; and concludes with a snare hit that “snaps us back” to the realm of post-Mellencamp arena rock. Oh wait, wasn’t this supposed to be a country song? I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the TOTALLY UNNECESSARY GUITAR SOLO, which is the best kind of guitar solo. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never worn or even heard of a snapback before, because that soaring outro elevates the niche subject matter to as close to universality as you can get in our fractured media landscape. I can’t relate to this song at all, and I love it all the better for it.
[9]

Anthony Easton: Spotify keeps pushing this and I keep being bored by it, which makes me feel like one of those Saving Country Music curmudgeons. I am also bored (and mildly offended) by how generic this is, how for a song about a woman, how few details are provided.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Hellooooo, clipped guitars and sequencers! About time country acts wore Taylor Swift’s electronic drag without hedging like Keith Urban. Because I heard it three times on Memorial Day weekend, it’s striking a chord. Credit to Shane McAnally for the supple production: attention to the small things (harmonies, for example) helps, as does encouraging two excellent guitar solos. However, boys, in most cases “kiss” is a transitive verb, therefore “your skin needs to be kissed on” is bullshit.
[7]

Katie Gill: This song is a perfectly good example of songs that are objectively ‘country’ by bands that are objectively ‘country’ but contain enough pop music stylings that they’ll crossover to the pop charts (or vice versa). Samples: Shania Twain’s “Man, I Feel Like a Woman,” Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats,” and everybody’s FAVORITE (ha ha) current country duo Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise.” “Snapback” is desperately trying to be country pop, right from the title alone: rock band t-shirts and snapbacks over cut-off jeans and bikini tops. The problem is, the song tried so hard to be country pop that Old Dominion forgot to make it memorable. It’s a generic country song in a sea of generic country songs by generic thirtysomething white men.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Pre-existing bias: I am bored and exhausted by country bands naming themselves variations on “you know, like the old South, catch my drift?” I’d hoped Lady Antebellum would be the nadir of that. Anyway, supposedly these guys listened to Taylor Swift’s “Style” to write this, but I would also have believed Nelly, or LFO, or Nick Jonas’s guitar solo, or a list of product placement mandates.
[3]

Josh Love: When I was a kid all I wore were snapbacks (pretty sure we didn’t call ’em that then). They were cheaper than fitted caps, though, so once I became socially self-conscious I badly wanted to upgrade to the pricier status symbol, and finally either I saved up enough or cajoled my parents into getting me a Colorado Rockies fitted (they were the hot new MLB team and I was nothing if not a bandwagon jumper). From that point forward any cap I ever owned was a fitted, so it’s definitely amusing to see the cheaper model making a comeback, surely somewhat ironically yet for country fans I’m assuming there’s a healthy amount of working class self-identification involved as well (pretty sure all “Make America Great Again lids are snapbacks). Old Dominion’s object here though isn’t a resolutely blue-collar gal, not when she’s also sporting Ray-Bans. She seems more like the kind of asshole who’s fundamentally incapable of posing for a photo without making a duck face or throwing up a wack gang sign. At least she seems like a good match for this square-jawed meathead.
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: Do you know the difference between a snapback and a baseball cap? Of course you do. Partly it’s to do with design, but also that snapback is a word only ever used by people younger than you. If you’re thinking that the generalised “you” in that assertion is a decoy for its broader, equally non-factual generalisation, then yes, you are somewhat right. But look at this Google Trends search for “snapback” and try to argue that this old-time country song from a country band with “old” in their name is anything less than Steve Buscemi singing to Abe Simpson.
[4]

Cassy Gress: This is the type of song that I should begrudgingly like. I glanced over the lyrics, and how the song describes a girl stereotypically enough that it may as well just be detailing a particular fetish, and grimaced. But at the same time, look at this guy, who pushes all of my eject buttons until that spine-tingling chorus. The song you like in spite of yourself, right? But Old Dominion never got me to that “like.” I was waiting for that moment of “aha, this is where the song got good,” and it never came. It needs a wink, a shrug, a laugh, charisma of some sort. Even the singalong “oh-oh-oh” chorus, which is ubiquitous in certain genres but can still be effective, just feels like it was thrown in for the purposes of making the song sell better. Be more likable, dammit!
[4]

Hannah Jocelyn: I go back and forth between liking and disliking “Snapback”; on one hand, that extra measure for “we got the beat, let’s drop it” is clunky and takes me out of the song, but on the other the slide guitar in the middle pleasantly reminds me of “Torn”. Then I realize the song as a whole also reminds me of “I Only Wanna Be With You”. So I listen for the keyboard sound and I like it again. Then I hear the whistle. My confusion ultimately subsides by the end, though, as the relaxed guitar solo is strangely enjoyable. Just like this song.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Influence flows both ways: Darius Rucker went from pop/rock stardom to Grand Old Opry member, and “Snapback” sounds like ’90s pop/rock of the ilk of, oh, Hootie & the Blowfish. And really, apart from the chugging bassline and Edge-esque guitar solo, this could be a Lumineers record as well. Sam Hunt is Hank Williams compared to these guys. As for the song itself, it’s nothing special.
[5]

Megan Harrington: Though its June ascension suggests that listeners associate “Snapback” with summer love and the easy, no pressure way two people can float into each other’s lives and linger there until the first frost forces them apart, I hear something else. I hear the way I want to remember that first great love, the way I want to frame those sunny days and tailgates and sunglasses stolen from the lost and found. Those moments are their own summer — too brief — but the beauty of “Snapback” is that it ends before you can remember what happens next.
[8]