The Singles Jukebox

Why we (except Anthony) gotta be so rude?

[Video]
[5.00]

Katie Gill: The Country Music Boring Cliches Checklist:  Some sort of stereotypical Southern flowers: ✓.  Small town/out in the country: ✓.  The piano gives more emotion than the singer: ✓.  Alcohol: ✓.  Relentless heteronormativity: ✓.  Total: 5/5. It’s a pity Thomas Rhett doesn’t even have an ounce of charisma to pull this song off because hoo boy does it have nothing going for it.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Sure is purty! As purty as the girl he’s gonna marry. I didn’t expect the twist, so the piano and details like the shot of whiskey and the dad add ironic counterpoint to what would be an otherwise gormless story. 
[6]

Anthony Easton: The piano line of this, the details leading up to the knife twist, how quiet this is, and how devastating, were gorgeous. That it is after a whole passel of songs that he has done about how much he loves his wife and how much he loves marriage, that this continues this argument in favour of marriage as the end point of mature love makes this more complex than it could be. It’s made even better by how it becomes slightly louder and slightly faster but in a way that has a nimbleness. Nothing about this overwhelms.
[9]

Ryo Miyauchi: Thomas Rhett takes friend zone pop a couple levels further. He doesn’t win much empathy, but thankfully, the pettiness that typically comes with such songs doesn’t get amplified to an intense degree in the equation. Marriage befits Rhett’s narrative as a natural part of the traditions surrounding its home genre anyway, so perhaps that’s less surprising of a feat.
[5]

Alex Clifton: I kept wondering why this was such a mopey song about marriage through the first minute, until the end of the chorus, which actually threw me for a loop; points to Thomas Rhett there for a twist that evaded my expectations. Additional points for respecting the girl’s feelings and not just busting into her wedding. Points off because this is a grown woman and you are still referring to her father as “daddy.” 
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: I don’t know, seems like a strong possibility that her daddy’s dreading this day because the family’s all trying to figure out who’s stuck babysitting Thomas (whom the bride insisted on inviting because of Southern politeness, expecting he’d decline because of Southern indirectness) so he doesn’t fill his flask at the open bar and make a passive-aggressive toast before cry-vomiting in the country club bathroom. Is it just not an expectation for men that if there’s messy unresolved romantic or sexual history around an event, you don’t go?
[3]