The Singles Jukebox

You better sit down, kids.

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[7.11]

Thomas Inskeep: Talk about a sucker punch. I’ve liked RaeLynn’s last two singles perfectly fine, gave them both [7]s, in fact. But I didn’t expect anything like this from her just yet in her career. She’s 22, and recently told Taste of Country that she wrote the brutal “Love Triangle” when she was just 18, about growing up as a child of divorce, stuck between two barely speaking parents. The subtle production emphasizes RaeLynn’s voice and lyrics — and this is all about the lyrics. This has already been a stellar year for female country artists breaking out (Cam, Maren Morris, Tara Thompson, Brandy Clark’s major label debut). I was already curious about what her Warners debut would sound like, but now I can’t wait.  One of the year’s best singles.
[10]

Jessica Doyle: The day my mother died I found myself listening to some country song–I don’t remember the title, don’t care to, some tripe which ends with the female narrator saying goodbye to her mother in a much more peaceful scene than the one I had just left. And I listened to the end, and cried, and when it was over said, “Fuck you,” knowing already that there is no sequel song in which the female narrator says three and a half years later, I still have dreams in which you’re dying. I hate country songs that make me cry. I don’t trust them. I want to yell at them, how dare you gloss this horrible thing, put pretty twangs on it. As soon as I caught on to the story RaeLynn was telling the waterworks came. Does that make it a good song? Damned if I know! Listen: every so often, looking at my daughters drawing, it hits me again that I have never had such undeserved power; that I can do more damage to these two people than to anyone else; and that I will do damage, in my stumbling. That my older daughter blows me kisses from her bed and said “You’re the best mommy,” does not guarantee her safety. That my marriage is happy does not guarantee anything. Some children grow up and tell a fair, sentimental story, in which the mommy and the daddy are loving and sad, and the daughter, in retrospect, can see it well and forgive them in rhyme. Some children grow up and say why did you leave me? I’m still mad at you for getting cancer, for all the sense that makes. That everything will turn out sad but pretty, managed and twanged, is a hope dangled without regard for how irrational, unfair, unpretty, human we can be. Fuck you, RaeLynn.
[9]

Iain Mew: Soft and restrained but quietly, gradually affecting — the second most memorable song building to a plaintive singing of the word “triangle.”
[7]

Alfred Soto: A divorce song in which the child observer notes the erotic tumult between her parents, “Love Triangle” is sensible, the details as punctilious as a writer can get: she’s staring at her boots while Patsy Cline (her parents’ listening choice, she makes clear) is on the radio. But if she doesn’t persuade me I blame a voice whose timbre suggests lack of affect instead of detachment. I can imagine Kellie Pickler or even Kira Isabella inhabiting the scenario.
[6]

Anthony Easton: The best thing about RaeLynn’s continued influence on the country charts is how the impolitic lushness wavers against genuine heartbreak. This song is about heartbreak, the lyrics are too clever, the music is too studio clean, her voice is too precise. But those are barriers, formalist gestures to prevent the feelings from a complete and total collapse. How she sings what could be racking sobs into soft woo-woos is the best example of how she transforms heartbreak into burnished tradition — like Alan Jackson or Randy Travis did.
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: RaeLynn offers a lot to digest through the eyes of a child in this divorce narrative from playing messenger in a broken marriage to bearing the pains of both parents. What gets me most, though, is her mention of autobiography: “And some mamas and daddies ran out of love in ’94.” Not that I didn’t believe this came from a real, personal place, but it certainly makes her story if not more human, then less exploitative pop fiction. She tucks it in at the end of the song, and the subtle reveal of it matters: she claims the experience but removes herself enough to let others find themselves in it too.
[7]

Will Adams: “Love Triangle” has the kind of narrative whose plainspokenness only amplifies its sadness, but there’s an asymmetry to the chorus that keeps tripping me up. It cruises along really well, actually — easygoing but with heightening urgency — until the B-section hits the brakes to put a spotlight on the title. Of course, the sudden stop could be intentional, as it mirrors the way the lyric severs the straight-line marriages with RaeLynn’s reality. That it still sounds odd to my ears could simply be a function of not having personal experience with the subject matter.
[6]

Brad Shoup: She refuses any chance to get maudlin: her downcast tone is the sound of someone who’s processed all this for a long time. The steel’s a quiet whine from two towns over, and instead of soloing, the guitar strengthens the wordless moans. Brave choices all around.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: On my 16th birthday, we were at a resort in the mountains getting dressed for dinner; my mother rummaged in my dad’s bag for the keycard but found a ring instead. That night we drove home, hours of silence broken by a quick, wordless dinner. No one would acknowledge it; I was sure I’d done something wrong. For the next month, the walls were full of shouting: at each other, then at me when I tried to ask what had happened. As childhood experiences of divorce go, this is toward the polite end, which places this porcelain-delicate tale of little suitcases and old Fords and pretty heartbreak in the realm of fairy tales. Those who think RaeLynn is walking thinkpiece bait have peeled off her career by now, which is for the best because I can imagine what they’d do with “some mamas and daddies… take forever to hearten (unlike those tramps).” But the problem isn’t country; Sunny Sweeney, Ashley Monroe and Miranda Lambert are among many whose love triangles happen in the real world. Nor is it major-label influence, which gave us “Family Portrait” and even angrier songs. The problem is the genteel soft-focus: a song where RaeLynn’s voice is smoothed over by reverb, where comfort-food strings and guitars signal an idea of respectability — that is, a song where the ugliest a marriage can get is not talking anymore. “Love Triangle” wants to evoke pain, but can’t get past the pleasant facade.
[4]