Not featuring Summer from the O.C….

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[5.00]

Brad Shoup: The mark of a well-conceived country song these days? You plunge off the bridge. Doesn’t happen here, despite Bradbery crying clarity all over the establishing details. Trembling with joy, she does the work left unfinished by that dead-end bank job. Toss in that five-note exhalation of a motif and you’ve got one hell of a driving song.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: I don’t know if this whole song is some sneaky metaphor for the South or just really devoted to a silly play on words, but it sounds good. Danielle Bradbery has a great voice, one capable of turning a chorus that is both eye-brow-raising (“gypsy” geez) and pretty forced into something that sounds good. The lyrics are pretty standard “moment of clarity” stuff, but the talent for something better in the future is here.
[5]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: A tale of breaking free from all ties ironically set to assembly-line songwriting. Sounds more condescending than rousing with its focus on dead-end jobs and cheap sunglasses, leaving you to wonder if Bradberry pities her protagonist more than she lets on.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: The musical equivalent of a pageant dress handed down from judge to judge to hopeful: tastefully fusty, no unauthorized skin or trend, spangled to match its pre-ordained tiara, and from a easier world than the jobless Martina McBride divorcee who’ll be sung about in it.
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: The heart swells suitably, even if it leaves touchstones well-worn as Martina McBride or Terri Clark behind her. But I ain’t buying the urge to turn Dixie into a real live human woman, and Bradbery’s story of a country girl made good isn’t as epic as she thinks — that is, it doesn’t convincingly absorb a population as well as an individual. The hook suggests the singer might have the hidden depths she claims for her protagonist.
[7]

Alfred Soto: I didn’t need to know her age to hear the disjunction between the material and the voice; it’s showbiz loud, rehearsed in front of thousands. Actually, the material is showbiz-real too.
[4]