The Singles Jukebox

Should we fix it, dear Kelsea?

[Video][Website]
[5.22]

Jeffrey Brister: *Ron Perlman in Fallout voice* Country music. Country music never changes. The production gets cleaner, the arrangements shift with the times, the references and alcohol choices get more or less sophisticated depending on the audience, but the essential components remain the same. There’s lots of energy, but no verve — just another bog-standard song about drinking over an ex-lover, but with a wine-mom theme. It goes down easy, just like a decent wine, but it’s got the same sort of wistful melancholy to it, like you could have spent a bit more money and effort on something richer, full-bodied, and satisfying.
[5]

Samson Savill de Jong: Kelsea Ballerini has a “live, laugh, love” doormat, tea towel and poster above her bed. At minimum. I kept waiting for the darker, deeper reasoning for why this drunkard is putting a fun mask on their alcoholism that would justify the song’s existence, but it never came. Instead it’s just a vapid song about the glories of drinking yourself to death alone. The suburban mum answer to bro country.
[2]

Dorian Sinclair: My mom is an alcoholic, and I had an exceedingly difficult childhood because of it. I bring this up because “Hole in the Bottle” captures, with frightening accuracy, the kind of things you hear growing up in that environment. It’s probably not meant to be as harrowing a listen as I, due to my history, found it — but to Ballerini’s credit, the recorded intro and the knife that is the final voiceover line shift the song from a kitschy “wine mom” number (which I would have despised) to something a bit more complicated.
[7]

Joshua Lu: Last year’s kelsea is a subdued album overall, but its strongest moment remains this uptempo bop that makes heartbreak fun. “Hole in the Bottle” is about a lighthearted dip into alcoholism in order to forget about a boy, with Kelsea’s insistence that she’s not broken-hearted only inviting scrutiny. The inherent playfulness this narrative invites is matched with her exuberant delivery — think of it as a companion piece to Maren Morris’s “Drunk Girls Don’t Cry,” just from the perspective of the drunk girl trying not to cry. For every quirky aspect — the spoken word intro and outro, probably included for TikTok appeal — there’s one that feels cliche — that ad hoc guitar solo — but it’s still a strong spin on a familiar, fun concept.
[8]

Will Adams: The pop production gloss (fittingly cosigned by Shania on a remix; this would’ve been on the red version of Up!, surely) is okay, if cluttered. Yes, drinking through a breakup is a country trope as old as time, but given that the “rosé all day” culture increasingly feels like a relic of the last decade, the operative descriptor for “Hole in the Bottle” is, alternately, dated or sadder than intended.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: The thwacking anthemic pop beat that doesn’t quite seem intended for the original song is very red-version-from-Up!, so no surprise there’s a version of this with Shania (which unfortunately is less exciting than you may expect). Otherwise it’s “Chandelier” with an arch theatrical wink, a bizarrely Britney video, and that sampled-retro-announcer trick I keep liking no matter how often it’s used.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Eschewing my usual practices, I watched the video instead of listening to the audio, and, well, I like drinking, but the fourth-rate pastiche of classic Hollywood and terrible group dancing complement a dumbfuck Miranda Lambert wannabe song.
[1]

Thomas Inskeep: Of all the current country stars melding pop/hip hop rhythms and country songwriting, Ballerini’s doing it the most smartly to my ears, and “Bottle” is a premium example. This has a snazzy little Keith Urban-esque guitar solo, a clever lyric about drinking (at a moment when country is awash in stupid drinking songs), and an assured vocal from Ballerini — and I want more.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: One of the best parts of “Hole in the Bottle” is the spinning guitar solo following the second chorus, where the guitar slides all over the groove and slowly coils then spirals and disappears behind the drums, as Kelsea closes the song with a proud, marshaling delivery that lifts the otherwise solid song a bit off the ground. Since Kelsea has been happily spiraling and tossing away all the alcohol she can, it’s a relief to see her enjoying her short bridge and chorus lead-in without falling over herself, chuckling and draining another bottle as the narrator reminds us of the looming issue as the song is clicked off.
[7]