Authenticity porn!

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[5.22]

Alfred Soto: The ringing of the beat-up old guitar is Jakob Dylan and Tom Petty’s, and as lively as it sounds it’s talkin’ loud and ain’t sayin’ nuthin’.
[5]

Brad Shoup: This shines like Lynne-era Heartbreakers. It ain’t wry, but it’s a breathless, melodic piece of starmyth. Eli jumps to the upper bound of his range for that exhortatory chorus, and a litany of “Crazy Girl” sins have met propitiation.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: Rousing and comfortable at the same time, that is, it possesses two of country music’s most satisfying qualities. If it had been able to turn its radio memories and beat up old guitars into more than mere signifiers, it could have been something remarkable. Fealty to timeworn tropes is how country music does its job — it suggests continuity and a respect for community over artistic idiosyncrasies — but the idea is to inhabit the clichés rather than enunciate them. Still, Eli Young Band go through the motions proficiently. Perhaps they believe one needs to be able to reproduce the fundamentals before moving on to more striking things.
[6]

John Seroff: Pop country, I think more so than most other genres, tends to make the delivery of emotion the prime objective. Is the song good? is often less important than how clearly and heartfelt it state its case. By that score, “Breaks Your Heart” succeeds; think of it, for better and for worse, as a Music Row “Boys of Summer”.
[6]

Anthony Easton: This post-Idol idea that anyone can be a star if you dream far and wide enough, that you will be successful is essentially a false one — for a couple of reasons. The first being that not everyone has the talent or skill to be successful, and the second being that the idea that singing or playing socially is good enough is degraded. It used to be that we sung at pubs, on the streets, in community choirs, and at church — singing was just part of the public discourse, for its own sake, and now singing seems to be only done in order to become famous enough to appear on stage in front of an audience. This kind of bothers me, and the song reminded me of such. Keeping on dreaming, even if it breaks your heart, isn’t a good idea or a worthwhile idea. It is a masochistic idea that prevents people who love singing for singing to be able to do so.
[6]

Sabina Tang: Exhibits restraint and dynamics, which I appreciate greatly given the subject matter. I won’t rate it higher than this because it’s not as good as that last Miranda Lambert single (which has grown on me in the usual manner of Christmassy mid-tempo ballads), but I would willingly replace Train’s drive-time radio slot with these guys.
[4]

Michaela Drapes: The screams of agony started right at the :30 mark and didn’t cease until the surprisingly competent guitar solo. Such nice young men, and this is a lovely message and all, but the earnestness was really just too much for me to bear.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: This song becomes hilarious if you imagine it is about Sonny Moore in his guitar band.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: The grinning rictus of rootsy authenticity will long outlive the corpse of rock and roll.
[3]