Big & Rich: Album of the Decade?

Has this actually vibrated your eardrum, Chuck? I'm intrigued...

As to whether anything has surpassed this as my own album of the year, I can respond in one syllable: no. I've moved from song to song and vibe to vibe on it and still love it. Doesn't get as much play as back in June, but it's still tops.

Based on the five tracks I've heard, this seems to be among the most OTM notes on this puppy.

I'll be buying this week.

>Big and Rich Save A Horse, Ride a Cowboy.

This is not country--it is on country radio, country music television,the country station on Yahoo Launch, and reviewed as country by Chuck Eddy in the Village Voice. I am glad that it is well liked, that it is getting notice and that it is the Video to Watch according to Yahoo,and the most requested on my local country radio station. The thing is that the whole thing is too camp, too sexy, too artificial, too glam to be country. It shows off too much, its all about the egos of Mr Big and Mr Rich. A a real cowboy doesn't give out 100 dollar bills to random bar patrons, there is a New York reference and no cowboy ever came to NYC--Joe Buck excepted.

This is country. It quotes Willie Nelson who is always automatically country. Not only does Willie come in to play, so do horses and that makes it doubly country (see Beer For My Horses by Toby Keith and MrNelson). It features getting drunk and making out in the back of apick up truck (not fucking, the fucking is implied, no this is just a little touch football). The title is that slightly risque pun that has been done since the beginning. As well, there are the fiddles...country has fiddle solos, nothing else does. Plus it combines sex and salvation--Jesus and Jezebel have been recent development, but they are there--Jason McCoy's Born Again in Dixieland is the only one that comes immediately to mind.

It might be hip hop. The highly self aware samples that are found through out the track and what begins it. (anyways aren't horse samples in, what with the newish noisy Missy Eliot). Then the handing out random money and buying rounds as a way to win games of masculine performance, would fit in quite well. As well, the mention of the phrases Bling Bling, Escalade, Freak Parade and Getting Buzzed. Then there is all the talking in the third person "having as big and Rich time", and some of the fiddle solos are thoroughly electronic.

Looking at the video, and how Big and Rich look like a fagged up Brooks and Dunn--if Brooks and Dunn weren't fagged up enough as it is, plus all of the heavily sexualised weirdness(Drag Queens, Dwarfs,Chorus lines of business suited girls in elaborate garters) , plus how they use the same bridge that Kenny Chesney used for the Young video, which couldn't be more earnest, and this couldn't be less. Maybe it is a conflation of pop and country music trends, a careful, ironic gloss on the nature of where things are, but that care is taken to make sure that it is more fun--its like he is countryfying the same shit that everyone else has been listening to in the last few years (ie Crown vs Kristal, the girls drinking long necks, etc.)

I wonder if this cross pollution is worth doing...country took from the alt boom a new traditionalism in subject matter, but not musically in a way that makes anything interesting. This might be a thumb nose to how fucking boring things have become, how treacly and how poignant. We used to have big summer anthems that came blaring from sexy boys in pick up trucks, and there hasn't been one in a long time-- this one isn't the most usual sense but it might just work until we get something really new tweaked.

Anthony Easton

I will not ever need to listen again.

"holy water", "wild west show", "save a horse", etc., etc. have stood my quarterly review. this made my best of the decade and will undoubtedly be in my year end best-of list.

that's when it started
to make sense to me at first
it's got, like, layers

Quite a few. Drags a bit in the middle, I think, but that's some damn good hard rock there (along with everything else). It's sorta like what Kid Rock was/is trying for, but better.

Heh. Interestingly enough, this is often what I was thinking about many (not all) reactions to Justified.

MANY (NOT ALL)

If needed, I will e-mail an mp3 of that on an endless loop.

people have been writing about how the album sounds, not just what it stands for, ever since the thing came out (all through this thread, and elsewhere). ditto justin's album, so i don't get that complaint at all. but that's just me. + "real world," "save a horse," and "wild west show" are three of the best songs on the album, to my ears. though it's still neat how people gravitate toward different tracks.

i think an album can have enormous merit and *still* be sort of misjudged (not necessarily "overrated") by its critics on account of what it represents in the marketplace. but like i said, this is a skepticism i'm happy to put aside right now. i know many people have been writing about how the record sounds--the reason i'm more open to it than my reaction to the single would normally allow.

xpost

This will sidetrack massively if I really get into it, but I'll just say that more than once I had a (completely individual) sensation that if that album didn't exist it would have to be invented, that it can be seen to function as a massive wish fulfillment of (in the VERY VERY broadest of terms) early 21st century teen-pop-into-hip-hop in the highest of profiles. Please note I say 'seem to function,' though, and that Chuck's observation is fully accurate.

As for Big and Rich again, they can't get loud enough for me. I want speed-metal chords as hooks next.

I'm betting it's Metallica's cover of Bob Seger's "Turn the Page." Which it doesn't sound like really, but ...
Nevertheless, I'm having trouble getting overly excited about this album as a whole. There are certainly some fine songs, and I understand the thought process behind it, but ... eh. I guess I'll give it some time.

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Is genre-crossing all it takes to become the album of the year these days?

And didn't Kid Rock kind of do this already?