You know, it's rare that I get to be surprised much when it comes to these charts. I mean, sure you get your weird stuff that'll show up every week, but seventeen weeks into Billboard BREAKDOWN, it takes a lot to really pique more interest. This week, however... well, I'm not really going to say I was surprised by everything that happened, but more than a few times I was perturbed enough to wonder if things were slightly out of the ordinary. Granted, going into next week given what I've heard about streaming data, I've got a good idea what's coming, but it's always kind of nice to be thrown off-guard a little.
Well, this gave me way more to talk about than I was expecting. Good to see that happening, even though, like with Tim McGraw, I don't expect this to get a lot of traffic. Okay, next up will probably be Lights, but it could be Opeth or Ty Segall either, so stay tuned!
Okay, if you've been listening to country music beyond just the past year or two, you've probably noticed that certain acts tend to take their party/relaxation songs to the beach or the Caribbean. It's lightweight, it's generally harmless, and occasionally it can be a fair amount of fun if you get acts like The Zac Brown Band or Jake Owen. Then again, both of these acts realize it isn't exactly a good thing to spend too much time at the beach, which is why Jake Owen's most recent single is an acoustic ballad and the Zac Brown Band are recording with Dave Grohl. But you occasionally run into acts in country music that don't ever seem to leave the beach, and undoubtedly the most popular of these acts is Kenny Chesney. He may have started out in neotraditional country back the 90s, but in the very early 2000s he found a niche in lightweight country that seemed destined for all-inclusive resorts and cruise lines. And to his credit, it was a niche that fit him well, and he and his arsenal of cowriters produced a fair number of pretty good songs. But as the decade wore on, astute listeners came to realize the beach for Kenny Chesney became less of a lane and more of a crutch, especially as he pumped out album after album of material that all sounded pretty similar. Sure, he'd occasionally drop an interesting collaboration or strike a more melancholy pose, but in the fourteen album released across his career, about eight or nine of them were firmly lodged in the beach. Kenny Chesney so thoroughly dropped himself into the Jimmy Buffett mold that there were many accusation of ripping Buffett off, but I'd argue that's not quite fair. As much as Jimmy Buffett has written some asinine songs, he wasn't afraid to be loose and silly and weird, and occasionally he did write some stellar songs. Kenny Chesney to me has always seemed like more of a workman with a little more dignity - he'll put out accessible, solid enough albums with plenty of songs that miss the point of 'Margaritaville', but he's never going to write 'A Pirate Looks At Forty' or a 'Cheeseburger In Paradise', and that means I've never really been that interested in him. That said, Kenny Chesney's newest single 'American Kids' did seem like a bit of a departure for the guy and while he only has four writing credits on this album, he is working with some of the better songwriters in Nashville right now, so I figured what the hell and gave 'The Big Revival' a chance - what did I find?
