The Singles Jukebox

Sounds like “horny songs for heterosexual American couples” are having their moment! Here’s the second one this week:

[Video]
[5.67]

Thomas Inskeep: Far too many of Stapleton’s singles have been too sleepy for my taste, slow-burning to the point of becoming self-extinguishing fires. But on “White Horse” he sounds antsy and uh-uh-urgent, like he means it, maaaaan. This is what I’ve always wanted from Stapleton; there’s never been a question of his prowess as either a songwriter or a singer, but “White Horse” has a hard country-rock energy to it, and just (sorry) burns. His best single in eons.
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: Chris has a bellow of a voice. If you randomly hand a mic to him standing up, he can turn the joint out. It’s a rarity in the world of high-profile country to have bellowers such as Stapleton who can be gentle and wistful as quickly as they can be passionate and gnarled, but it’s a welcome time to have him. The problem with this Grammy-winning song is that he is too stuck on that bellow, stretching it so far he can’t take it in another direction once he hits the high notes in the chorus. You feel him strain in the last one: keening and screaming, but not yet breaking through. The guitar licks during the intro feel gentle and wispy, like dandelions for him to trample upon. But the guitar riff — that chugs below his voice before the drums during the first verse, echoes behind him during the post-chorus, then kicks in at the outro — is so powerful. He has to raise his voice higher and louder to not be stopped before he can gallop further. So when he really wails at the last one and growls the title at each post-chorus, it never truly kicks you in the chest the way it should. And the lyrics — written alongside Dan Wilson, co-writer/producer of “Someone Like You” — aren’t distinct or heart-rending enough. You feel the guilt, fear, and despair in Chris’s voice, but that’s a given — the lyrics don’t grip onto you, and you slip off Stapleton’s strong back. The words “If that’s the kind of love you want to wait for / Hold on tight, girl, I ain’t there yet” should hit you in the heart, but they feel noncommital, a half-assed explanation that doesn’t feel as deep as the howl says it is. It feels like he’s chosen to ride up to another woman’s fence post with the white stallion she asked for, beard trimmed but not cut, his saddle built for two. Maybe he already has chosen a white horse — let him ride off on his American saddlebred. He needs to feed the American cream draft bridled to Morgane’s fence.
[8]

Katherine St. Asaph: The song is solid. Really, it is. Couldn’t have been sung better. But the first few seconds, up until the second line, had me primed for something like Mazzy Star doing Liz Fraser’s “This Love,” slow-burning and immaculate. When the Southern-rock machismo arrives I still just want that.
[4]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: I know Stapleton can build a song from the ground up, but the foundation feels half-formed here. There’s an emptiness to the bombast, a missing element that makes the structure feel closer to an empty freshman dorm than a lovingly decorated living space. Maybe a bridge would help, but I’m still left thinking, “Is that it?”
[5]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The intro is promising: all moody buildup and slamming drums before Stapleton pares it back down again. Strangely, he betrays all sense of dynamics for loud guitar and louder shouting. That damn snare drum feels so out of place, just cutting through the noise in the name of something epic. Where’s the nuance of a John Wayne performance?
[3]

Alfred Soto: Do I hear “Wanted Dead or Alive” in that ersatz spooky acoustic intro? I do. Then Chris Stapleton’s brontosaurus vocals stomp all over the thing with greater force than the damn drums. To look for subtlety in a Stapleton performance is like asking Nicolas Cage for restraint, but would this palooka have a hair of Cage’s gonzo spirit.
[3]

Taylor Alatorre: The more Chris Stapleton seems content to be known simply as “that guy with the voice,” the less interested I become. And it feels especially like overkill to hear that burly titan of a voice going to town on what is essentially a late ’90s alt-rock track. Like bagging a squirrel with a shotgun slug, he belts out his lonesome troubadour bromides over a slightly hardened echo of Fastball’s All the Pain Money Can Buy, while the steady hand of Dan Wilson waits in the wings, ready to fence in any wilder impulses that may still be around somewhere. If Stapleton wants to inhabit the middle of the road more permanently, he should own up to that desire instead of trying to convince us he’s still riding along its untamed fringes.
[5]

Jacob Satter: Stapleton’s near-strangulated sense of urgency wants to goad this country rock potboiler to higher stakes, but the climb feels bathetic and top-heavy. Where’s the levels and the drama?  Where’s the variety? Good lord, where’s the bass? Grammy win notwithstanding, I daresay you can put “White Horse” side-by-side with a similarly structured but more ambitious shitkicker of a tune (say, Ashley McBryde’s lesser-heard “Blackout Betty“) and prove it hardly outstanding in its field.
[5]

Ian Mathers: I am absolutely not used to singers following up florid descriptions of the kind of love the Other wants with “Hold on tight, girl, I ain’t there yet.” And I am always a sucker for songs that nail specific emotions or moments that feel underserved in the broader corpus of song. It helps (for me) that this is definitely country rock and not whatever they’re calling what Morgan Wallen plays. The sound is a little generic but the lyrics are specific enough to make up for it.
[7]

Michael Hong: Stapleton only promises “not yet” on “White Horse,” never revealing how much he’s putting in. The parts where he falls quiet and the electric guitar sings sound like one more rodeo — not the last, who knows when that’ll be. It sounds like a thrilling dance so you wait anyway, hoping you’ll be the cowboy’s next adventure.
[6]

Leah Isobel: I think what makes “White Horse” work for me is its evident sense of play-acting; its cheeseball Southern-rock framing and Chris Stapleton’s living signifier of a voice automatically put quote marks around the whole song. From there, all kinds of interpretations can enter, each one sillier and more joyful than the last. Personally, I think this is actually a song about fucking and the white horse in question is [redacted]
[8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Look: all I know is that moms love this guy. I’m starting to see the appeal as well; while the hilariously overdriven guitars and Stapleton’s howl imply dashing romance and bombastic gesture, the lyrics are more interestingly ambivalent, full of moderated expectations and hints of regret. At worst I could see this soundtracking fancams for historical epics; at best I can pretend it’s an ode to one of the world’s oldest surviving chalk figures. ALSO WAIT I JUST REALIZED THE MELODY HERE REMINDS ME OF “PONY” HOW DEEP DOES THE HORSE SONG RABBIT HOLE GO?
[6]