Ronnie Dunn – Bleed Red
Our first post to invoke both the Osmonds and England’s Stevie G…
[Video][Website]
[4.33]
Chuck Eddy: Is “red” as in “red states”? Is this about soldiers? And as for the “Ring Around The Rosie” reference, the Osmonds beat Ronnie to it in “All Fall Down” on Crazy Horses, almost 40 years ago, and they were more coherent about the vapid message, too. Wonder if he regrets going solo yet.
[4]
Martin Skidmore: Kevin Keegan once said “Stevie Gerrard’s Liverpool through and through – if you cut him, he’d bleed red!” I like Dunn’s plaintive voice, but the generic power ballad backing has disappointingly little country in it, and the song is a bit of a repetitive bore.
[5]
Kat Stevens: Crying out for a Leona Lewis cover.
[6]
Alfred Soto: It’s easier to discard this can of creamed corn than to engage it, so I applaud its liberalism disguised as universalism. But the arrangement is flaccid until the boring guitar solo: Dunn’s attractive burr of a voice hangs in the air by itself. Which isn’t my idea of inclusiveness.
[5]
Zach Lyon: I like this song to the extent that I can stretch its meaning well into the imagined and apply it to a million Hot Button Country Music Issues: lyrics like “my scars, they are your scars” and “turn the anger into water” take on the weight of a neverending discourse and they’re moving in that way. And then I realize that this is just so damn vague and inoffensive that I’m actually offended by the manipulation. Country music shouldn’t immediately conjure up thoughts of this discourse and that’s my problem; regardless, give us a single goddamn specific, Ronnie. This is like the worst and most effective campaign speech ever.
[4]
Josh Langhoff: He may be my favorite singer on the charts right now, but I still don’t understand why he went and joined The Fray.
[2]