The Singles Jukebox

Could someone get Luke Bryan some aloe vera?

[Video]
[4.14]

A.J. Cohn: Sunscreen. Apply before going outdoors. Every two hours, repeat. 
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: I’ve generally found Bryan’s “hey girl” songs obnoxious, but he’s now old enough to be going the Chesney “remember when” route, which somehow rings more true. The title conceit is admittedly cute, and the banjo in the chorus doesn’t hurt, either. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: Banjos follow drum machines on Luke Bryan singles like sunburns follow sunrises, or something. This isn’t terrible: he bleats, goat-ish, and the sky purples and, voila, it’s sunset. Luke wishes wimmin could do that. 
[4]

Vikram Joseph: It’s baffled and amused me in equal measure to realise just how big Luke Bryan is in the USA — it’s so far from the sort of thing that could ever be commercially successful this side of the Atlantic, just an unbridgeable cultural chasm. “Sunrise, Sunburn, Sunset” is an earnest, jangly, anodyne country-pop song, striving manfully for a hazily universal “Summer of ’69” hue of nostalgia and ending up sounding so basic (in both senses) that it’s almost admirable. It’s the sort of thing you might feel obliged to half-heartedly slow-dance to at your mate’s parents’ 25th wedding anniversary party in a damp marquee in a field.
[4]

Jessica Doyle: In light of recent events it seemed appropriate to consult with the works of the late Leo Rosten; but Yiddish does not have a word for “bland with a vague sprinkling of nostalgia, with no particular motivation except demographic analysis.” I kept waiting for the song to justify itself somehow — class difference? regret? yearning? any sort of driving emotion at all? — but got bubkes.
[3]

Julian Axelrod: There’s exactly one good idea buried in this rejected Nicholas Sparks script: in the chorus Bryan remarks, “Nothing will ever be as easy as you and me/tangled up with nowhere to be,” which looks beyond this idyllic summer to a future of bleak falls. But when a line like that appears in this kind of dunderheaded good-times anthem, it’s not a feature — it’s a fluke. After all, it’s not like Luke Bryan is known for his nuance.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: The lyric is as interesting as bro-country ever gets to be, which is to say product placement brand names stand in for detail (here, Pacific Sunwear), bits of potential nuance — painting someone else’s lake house, watching everyone else pair off — are left unexplored, and the girl is a cipher. The melody is as proven as country-music melodies ever are, which is to say it’s the start of Taylor Swift’s “Mean,” conveniently repeated until it re-earworms. Someday country will get a little more compelling, and all this’ll ever be is Luke Bryan.
[5]