The Singles Jukebox

A 90s baby racks up some 10s…

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[7.20]

Thomas Inskeep: “Turnin’ every head, hell I ain’t even tryin'” — that’s because Maren Morris is that good, that natural, she really doesn’t have to try. I know she’s talking about cruising in her ’80s Mercedes, but the lyric applies to her talent just as easily. I think we can officially say that we’ve got a new class of female country singers now who are as comfortable working in pop idioms as country, while being completely country to the core: Morris, Cam, Maddie & Tae. And Morris is at the head of that class. “80s Mercedes” is a highlight of her debut album Hero, a song about driving that actually drives, that sounds amazing blasting from car speakers, that makes you feel it. Everything about this works. And I want her white leather jacket. 
[10]

Alfred Soto: Even if the producer hadn’t included a sequencer this tuneful bit of lust would be marvelous: sung with wit and precision by Maren Morris, taking the song for a ride as if it were a Reagan-era 380 SL. An advance after the blustery “My Church.”
[9]

Katie Gill: “My Church” was a REALLY GOOD country car song. So Morris decides to follow that up with…another country car song? And a cliche car song at that! It’s not even a car song based around a silly metaphor, which are undoubtedly the best car songs. It’s a car song…about a car. Add in the over-worked vocals, half-hearted “wuh-ohs” and even more half-hearted rhymes and really, can’t we just listen to “My Church” again?
[3]

Lauren Gilbert: Maren Morris has explored the mythos of the car before (“My Church”), but in “80s Mercedes,” she’s absolutely nailed the car as self-expression. Country music has made the love of the open road a entire subgenre of its own, but most such songs are very masculine-coded. This jam — because I’m not sure how else to describe it; it’s a mf jam — isn’t a rebuke to the endless songs about trucks, and it’s stronger for it. It’s just a woman singing about her own car, her own life, her own freedom. Her soaring vocals add to the urgency; listening to this song, I just want to jump on the 5 and floor it, drive until I run out of country.
[10]

Will Rivitz: I know nostalgia is all the rage, but “I’m a ’90s baby in an ’80s Mercedes” is about as low as you can get without entering Puthland. I quite like a lot of pop-country; this is certainly not a song I’d show somebody who doesn’t.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: An overextended lyrical merging of woman and car, no doubt, but it makes a change from a car being a penis substitute, and Morris’s boast is not just self-aggrandising. The generosity of her tone makes the luxury she sings about seem accessible and aspirational, and makes me forgive a couple of really forced rhymes. That bass prowls like Saturday night, and the beat shakes and shakes with confidence as long as the road.
[10]

Cassy Gress: I know she was born in 1990, but I’m not sure I buy Maren as a “90s kid”, particularly when she doesn’t seem to know what decade Raybans were popular in. Seems more likely that this is one of those “quote the brand names for ‘regular joe’ cred” kinds of country songs. It’s also one of those songs where the flow of the lyrics doesn’t match the flow of the music, in lines like “feel like a hard to GET starLET”, “keeps get-TING bet-TER with age”, “classic through a-NY de-CADE”. There’s neat harmonies on her vocals in the chorus, but this feels too slapdash.
[3]

Brad Shoup: The chorus is fitted for Morris’s open-throttle pipes, but I suspect that it and everything else was built around that rhyme. But she settles into it like it’s a beanbag. This is more adult-alternative than country, or maybe country’s heading for Little Big Town.
[6]

Taylor Alatorre: Is the central couplet a bit heavy-handed? Sure. Is there a way she could’ve expressed the same sentiment without losing any of its immediacy? I doubt it. Morris was right to stick with the bluntness of the first draft, which carries the whiff of truth in a way that a more nuanced metaphor never could. It helps that the rest of the lyrics, delivered with the right mix of pride and playfulness, acknowledge the futility of pining for an era before you were born. None of this is practical, she admits, but neither is she — an honest rationale, and a welcome departure from the kind of unreconstructed nostalgia that revived vinyl and killed Vinyl. The synth bassline and piano power chords may recall the titular decade, but Morris’ concerns are located squarely in the present moment.
[8]

Anthony Easton: The writing is good, but the delivery is great. The sing-along chorus is a masterpiece of audience particpation, the guitars rollick straight out of the gates, and the it’s this exquisite, sweet-but-not-too-sweet confection. Perfect summer song.
[10]