Wednesday, November 28th, 2018

Kane Brown – Lose It

If by “it” you mean “a couple of points since last time”…


[Video]
[4.25]

Katie Gill: It says a lot about Kane Brown’s charisma that he’s able to sell these far too generic “girl you’re so pretty” middle-of-the-top-20 lyrics. The meter and rhythm in the chorus is super fun, the violins and the drums work amazingly well together, and I love the brief bridge before the final chorus. It’s a thought-out blend of the country genre and pop stylings that someone like Sam Hunt can only dream of achieving.
[7]

Tim de Reuse: Innovation in 21st century country: a vocalist insufferable not for a straining, Nicklebackian gruffness, but because of his too-clean, monotone nasality. The instrumental is kind of fascinating, though; we’ve got banjo, we’ve got mournful fiddle, we’ve got hard-rock distortion, we’ve got sci-fi synth blooping every once in a while, and it’s all wrangled together into a tasteful, spacious sonic package. Whoever produced this deserves to be working with a less obnoxious headliner.
[5]

Anthony Easton: The last Kane Brown album had potential, but this one kind of broke him open for me. He has that kind of laconic, looping Sam Hunt quality, and the soft ramping up to an almost manic hardness, but there is some really interesting variation here. The rests have an anxious push, and the whole thing speeds pretty close to recklessness. It moves from R&B classicism to rock nostalgia, from Sam Hunt to Eric Church at his grindiest. The lyrics rest on a pretty sodden single entendre, but the hunger to fuck actually has more of a push than some of his cohort. Not as much of a push as Ashley Monroe, but what does?
[8]

John Seroff: I’ll acknowledge that Brown’s foghorn tone gives George Strait a run for his adenoids, but what in the name of Kawliga is going on with his phrasing? Somewhere between trying to match “phone in your hand” with “cover band,” pouring on the foreboding banjo (THERE’S a preset for you), high-in-the-mix percussion that wandered in from an unrelated session next door, overbearing guitar and some unasked for late-innings heroics from the strings, it all falls apart.
[3]

Ian Mathers: I’d be more impressed with how many different parsings of the title phrase he manages to get through if even a couple of them weren’t dumb as hell; meanwhile, the backing track is like every nightmare I had after being stuck in a room with CMT on when I was growing up.
[3]

Alfred Soto: I have an unnatural disgust with titles promising a release or hysteria that never happens. Kane Brown sticks to the script with such fidelity that I can see the bouncing ball on each syllable. And what on earth is the banjo doing?
[3]

Micha Cavaseno: Y’know, even as a non-country fan I’d like to think the genre deserves a little better than something like a Dream Street comeback single. Kane Brown’s about as uninteresting a vocalist as you can get, and the rest feels like your typical pop record where the general sentiment is old-fashioned but you’re playing Current-Day Pop Culture Madlibs. Also, for a record that brags so relentlessly about getting away from modern distractions, the pop production is blatantly hollow. I take it back: Dream Street did less transparent gestures than this.
[2]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: That back-and-forth vocal melody in the chorus drives me up a wall. It’s completely off-putting given Kane Brown’s congested-sounding voice, making the rest of the song worth ignoring.
[3]

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