Josh Turner – All Over Me
Subtext!…
[Website]
[5.57]
Anthony Easton: I would like to point out publicly that I would like to be Josh Turner’s girl.
[6]
Michaelangelo Matos: A sex song as a beach song; cute. “Coppertone 45” and “sycamore tree” is the closest we get to writerly detail, and good: the tune is too bouncy to support much more. I would not mind this becoming my summer jam.
[7]
Jonathan Bogart: Despite its classic-rock gestures over the past twenty years, modern country remains for the most part devoutly unfunky. This seems to be a rare exception, setting up a New Orleans R&B shuffle and even allowing for some syncopation in the percussion. Turner’s good-natured baritone rumbles out some unexciting lyrics, but the invocation of good times is clear enough in the music. A Mac Davis for the twenty-tens, then.
[8]
Chuck Eddy: Bassline recalls “Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance)” by Leo Sayer, words about pouring her love all over him recall “”Pour Some Sugar On Me” and several Ohio Players LP covers, and I like the piano bar opening and whenever his voice goes all basso profundo. All in all, an easy groove.
[7]
Doug Robertson: Never before has an amazing summer day out by the river, overflowing with promises of good times and all the fun and games with the love of your life that you could hope for, been described with such little enthusiasm. If this was being sung from the girl’s point of view then I could fully understand the dread and depression that weighs down this tune, but if you can’t even get pleasure out of what sounds like a pretty damned good weekend, then you might as well just give up now as everything else life has to offer is just going to really disappoint you.
[3]
Martin Skidmore: I like his voice when it stays deep, but he does sing the odd line in a higher register, and he sounds anonymous then. The song is inconsequential and hackneyed, and the music stays medium-paced and uninteresting.
[3]
Alfred Soto: His baritone suggests he’s serious about cracking lame jokes and serious about seriously wanting to fuck the shit out of the barefoot gal with the hair down. Not serious enough to commission a song worthy of his lust and attention though.
[5]
modern country remains for the most part devoutly unfunky. This seems to be a rare exception
Ha ha, I actually mentioned Ohio Players LP covers, but I disagree with this in so many ways. For one thing, yeah, sure, this song has a bit of a lilt (maybe distantly descended from New Orleans R&B, but if so, probably filtered though, I don’t know, Blonde On Blonde by way of the Leo Sayer Dylan-dream homage I mentioned or maybe Stealers Wheel’s similar-rhythmed Dylan homage “Stuck In The Middle With You”), but it’s got no more of a lilt than any number of Kenny Chesney, Billy Currington, Pat Green, or James Otto tracks from the last few years. And I have no idea in what way it’s got more funk in its rhythm than any number of contemporary country tracks by, say, Big N Rich, Montgomery Gentry, Gretchen Wilson, Trace Adkins, Toby Keith, Shannon Brown, Shelly Fairchild, Jace Everett, Flynville Train, Kentucky Headhunters, Brooks & Dunn, Carter’s Chord, Rebecca Lynn Howard, Martina McBride, Lee Ann Rimes, Joe Dee Messina, Alecia Elliott, SheDaisy, Colt Ford, Cowboy Troy, or, uh, Kid Rock, to name just a few. Just earlier this year, Currington’s hit “That’s How Country Boys Roll” and Adkins w/ Blake Shelton’s “Hillbilly Bone” (neither even an especially great song) took their funk directly from mid ’70s Skynyrd. And if nothing by most of these acts swings its classic rock as hard as, say, “Rock And Roll Hootchie Koo” or “Back In The Saddle” or “Hair Of The Dog” or Black Oak Arkansas’s “Hot N Nasty,” neither does just about any hit “rock” (hell, probably even hit r&b, pop, or hip-hop) lately. So why single out country?
And by contemporary “rock” being 99% unfunky, I don’t just mean flyover-state active-rock radio crap, I mean indie hipster stuff, too. And metal, for that matter. Bottom line is, I wouldn’t say I’m feeling a whole lot of funk anywhere* lately (hip-hop has seen funkier days, too), and country is hardly the biggest culprit. (Also, I left out Laura Bell Bundy.)
* — Well, Chitlin’ Circut/Southern Soul, I guess, but nobody else here even seems to know that stuff exists anymore.
(“Circuit,” I meant. And “LeAnn” Rimes.)
And I’m sure there are current funky areas I’m not thinking of, or that I don’t pay enough attention to myself (grime, duh — and is UK “funky house” very funky? Dancehall maybe? And I’m sure there’s more in hip-hop still than I give it credit for; I just don’t like much of it these days. ( Also, was Dylan even a New Orleans r&b fan?) But my point still stands, more or less.
I certainly don’t disagree that there’s very little funk anywhere on the radio these days, R&B and pop occasionally excepted. I singled out country because we were talking about a country single.
I’m not as thorough a country listener as you, Chuck, and when I tune into the country stations they always seem to be playing ballads. Obviously far too small a sample size to extrapolate as I did.