Clare Dunn – Tuxedo
As long as he’s got no suit and tie…
[Video][Website]
[6.00]
Thomas Inskeep: Big voice and bigger drums on an ode to a “George Strait quiet type” with “big, strong hands” who gives Dunn “gives [her] just what [she] like[s] all night.” This doesn’t sound like anything on country radio right now, which is just why it needs to be on country radio right now. She is, as they say, one to watch.
[8]
Alfred Soto: A beat as tough as the man’s tough hands, guitars that can make short work of any tuxedo. Only lazy verse lyrics keep this from triumph.
[7]
Jessica Doyle: Lady, it is 2016. Your love object is probably aware that you yourself have two hands and can perhaps lend one of them to him, or at least go get a damn glass of ice water, instead of bragging about passivity and calling it admiration.
[3]
Anthony Easton: How she sings “ooh” is perfect, about as good as the bridge of “tux-tux-tuxedo,” and almost as perfect as the sing-along choruses. Plus, how fucking hot is that line about a dirty white T-shirt? This is the best sing-along pop song I’ve heard since “Pontoon.”
[10]
Cassy Gress: I didn’t think I was the target audience, but I generally like stompy songs and am related to a number of sweaty guys in dirty white tees. If I am the target audience, she missed her mark. Her voice is pretty one-note all the way through, and she ends up sounding like either she has no personal connection to the lyrical content, or she really does have a tux-less man and is bored with him.
[4]
Will Adams: If the title is meant to denote what the ideal guy doesn’t have to wear/embody, why have your chorus be a jumble of words leading up to climax of just that word, spotlighting it via every hook trick in the book? With each Tux-tux-tuxedooo, Clare Dunn muddles her message, while the lighters-waving arrangement quickly wears thin.
[4]
Brad Shoup: The first verse has a start-stop like megapop favorite “Friending”. But it’s all so much preamble for the chorus, which chops a nice couplet (“don’t need no/tuxedo”) into a hick-hop approximate. This is walking-into-the-bar music for sure, but after a while maybe you gotta stop hovering.
[6]
OK, this is going to be my second Miranda Lambert comparison in as many comments, so perhaps I should go to Pop Writer Hell, but I feel much the same listening to this as I do listening to “Platinum”. I recognize the variety of femininity on display, but I couldn’t have less in common with it. But it’s incredibly fun to sing along with it, and get swept away with the fantasy that I could ever be that kind of country girl.
though I would point out that “a George Strait quiet type” is kind of contradiction; you literally just named a man whose career is based on making noise.
George Strait has always struck me as the master of the courtly and often boring midtempo country ballad.