The Singles Jukebox

Our highest-scoring single to date from any artist threatened by Waffle House…

[Video]
[4.40]

Taylor Alatorre: Whitsitt Chapel is a solid album, but “Halfway to Hell” is something a teacher might put on the overhead projector to illustrate how not to write a thesis statement. “Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘backsliding‘ as…” and so forth. The single spells out its themes with such unvarying bluntness that it feels like an ill-fated attempt to clone the entire album in miniature. It’s understandable that an erstwhile Memphis rap understudy would want to sand down his pill-popping, sizzurp-sipping past in order to meet his big Nashville moment; we wouldn’t be writing about him otherwise. But when you start a song off with such a beguiling audio fragment of a Baptist sermon at the outer edges of the universe, then smother it in the cradle with a bunch of Mad Lib dualisms and Truck Month theatrics, the calculated inoffensiveness threatens to actually offend.
[4]

Andrew Karpan: Another somewhat singular creature of country music’s endless push for authenticity, this time produced by the same label as Jason Aldean, with a kind of dirtbag grit that would make Post Malone blush. Which is to say that it’s a record that creaks and growls — often convincingly — but to what end?
[4]

Alfred Soto: Decent rumbler halfway between Eric Church and Mumford and Sons. If I’m honest with myself, Morgan Wallen’s done this rue-on-a-Sunday better of late. 
[5]

Nortey Dowuona: Zach Crowell was part of the production crew that made Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Back Road.” He was also part of the production team of “Kinfolks.” So in theory, he should be able to produce a barn-burning gospel country record, but instead he produces a thinly rendered WWE parody of such. The problem is at first the drumkit. The kick pattern of the first verse is solid, allowing Jelly to take hold in the mix, swell up during the pre-chorus, and soar into the chorus itself. But the loud snare smacks in the second verse and chorus distract from the banal lyrics; the line about a chariot carrying him away is the only one that’s compelling. You could never tell this man has actually survived the reality of dancing between sin and salvation because the production is neither lush and glossy enough to carry him away, not rough enough to sweep him into hell. Which makes me think: Where’s the Zach Crowell who produced “2016”?
[4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: This is such a WWE entrance theme banger – I’m finding it hard to critique without imagining flamethrowers and dramatic ring walk spectacle. What do you even do with something this overwrought when you just hear it on the radio or in a playlist?
[6]

Mark Sinker: This guy takes the first two-thirds of jazz co-inventor Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe’s very well-known stage name and fuses it with maybe-unmeant echoes of AC/DC / Chris Rea title-fu. As a mode of faith, this should (by the demands of its expressed content) be more generic in form than not, that to believe is to be one of billions in similar plight, while the One that’s truly Original and Particulate is the Inexpressible Object of the Belief… and so all along the lines, until it rides off into its wide-open infinite expanse of many-times-heard-before reverb. And counter this, a reason not to concern-troll an entire religion is that any church with actual-real riz will be divided against itself. 
[4]

Oliver Maier: Jelly Roll nooo stop you’re not supposed to drink the holy water!! Noooo he can’t hear me over the terrible mix!!!! Jelly Roll NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
[2]

Ian Mathers: I’ve been re-reading Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series recently, where (among many other things) the future setting has in its past a series of religious wars so terrifying that by the time of the books it’s illegal to proselytize. You can believe whatever you want and discuss it with your personal religious counselor, but making it any kind of cultural signifier, let alone ammunition in any kind of cultural conflict, is absolutely taboo. The setting is an interestingly fraught mix between a utopia and a dystopia, but I gotta admit, the whole “don’t talk about religion” bit sits pretty easily with me these days.
[3]

Isabel Cole: Maybe it’s my choirgirl past talking, but “this little light of mine / damn near burned me alive” is a delightful piece of cheeky blasphemy. The rest of the song isn’t terrible, but nothing else feels as specific or as evocative as that. The chorus has some potentially decent ideas that are washed out by the mix into an undifferentiated wind of wailing, and the production refuses to entertain any kind of dynamism. (It feels like a very basic expectation for the song to drop more dramatically before the explosion into the final chorus, but it just… doesn’t….) Jelly Roll, meanwhile, hits his marks fine, but he never sounds like a man condemned, unless your idea of hell is a particularly divey karaoke bar.
[5]

Brad Shoup: “This little light of mine/damn near burned me alive” is a nice contribution to the dirtbag hymnal. But it’s buried in a mudslide of the hoariest crazy/beautiful imagery: booze and Bible verses, angels and devils, self-destruction and salvation. It’s twanged out but has the overdrive of hair metal, with a light disco shuffle. The result is not unlike a 2010s Carrie Underwood crossover, but with a lot less fear of God.
[5]

Katherine St. Asaph: Is one snippet of a sermon really enough to summon hellfire unto a song? Perhaps not, but who else is trying?
[7]

TA Inskeep: Quit bellowing, man. As much as I hate invoking these names, this is (Kid Rock rapping) x (Nickelback’s guitars) + banjo, and it = nothing I need or want to hear again.
[2]

Hannah Jocelyn: I liked “Need a Favor” more than I should have — it’s definitely a dirge, but I would have given it a [6] for the part of me that enjoyed listening to Nickelback as a mini-Hannah. This doesn’t work, though it does answer the long-pressing question of “what if Rascal Flatts wasn’t even a little bit of fun?”.
[4]

Dave Moore: For a few moments during this I’m transported to the glorious few months of Big ‘n’ Rich’s alt-weekly champions and ensuing message board conversations, which was the last time anything I’d have to say about hip-hop and country might have sounded even remotely fresh. Accordingly, this feels about twenty years too stale, though I’m happy enough for Jelly Roll’s success.
[5]

Daniel Monteshenko: Sure, it sounds like a rousing song for the antagonist to sing in act two of a critically derided Broadway jukebox musical. Yup, it’s as clichéd as any song you’ve ever heard mention hard liquor, the Cross and “mama.” Of course the title’s reverse SEO’d to capture unknown AC/DC fans. And you know it’s overproduced, airless and a product of the loudness wars. But damnit, that’s a hell (heh) of a chorus.
[6]