CD Review: Lady Antebellum “Own the Night”

October 19, 2011

Take a look at recent adult contemporary charts and you’ll find that some of the format’s biggest hits of the last few years have been by youngsters: Miley Cyrus. Adele. Taylor Swift. As a contemporary adult, I find the implications of that fact a little embarrassing, and a little sad. Then there’s Lady Antebellum, who landed the mother of all adult contemporary hits in the form of last year’s “Need You Now”. The Nashville country pop trio recently released their third album, called Own the Night, and it occurs to me about three songs into this new record: these are the songs Taylor Swift would be singing if she were 15 or 20 years older.

There’s really very little difference between the average Taylor Swift song and the songs of Lady Antebellum. They both play melodic, radio-friendly pop love songs that, for little more than geographic origin, the occasional flourish of mandolin and fiddle and a general lack of Autotune, somehow qualifies as country. (What? No cowboy hats? No songs about tractors?) You could easily imagine that it was the same hit-for-hire team supplying material to both acts. Lady Antebellum singer Hillary Scott even sounds a little like Swift, especially on a big, heart-wrenching, string-laden, piano ballad like “As You Turn Away”, one of the highlights of Own the Night.

What most distinguishes Scott and her bandmates, singer Charles Kelley and multi-instrumentalist Dave Haywood, from Taylor Swift (well, aside from the fact that most of Lady Antebellum’s songs are vocal duets) are the stories their songs tell. These aren’t the chronicles and confessions of high school girls and boys, but the backstories and subtexts of those girls’ and boys’ high school reunions.

Never mind that they’re only a few years older than Swift, Lady Antebellum’s songs are the probable middle-aged ever-afters of Swift’s “Love Story”, where the googly eyed crushes of high school are distant memories, and every first kiss is informed by the consequences of how many other first kisses. In “Just a Kiss”, the album’s lead single, Scott and Kelley arrive at a moonlit doorstep at the end of a date and move cautiously to a good-night kiss, singing “I don’t want to mess this thing up.” These are people with pasts.

Two old classmates reminisce separately about a single high school slow dance they’d shared years earlier, before having gone their separate ways in life – “for me you’ll always be 18 and beautiful” – in the lovely and heartbreaking “Dancing Away With My Heart”. Meanwhile, in “Somewhere Love Remains”, a couple who’ve shared a life together find themselves at the edge of splitting up – again. Sure, “Friday Night” is an upbeat, 80s-style rocker (no way this wasn’t written for the soundtrack of the remade Footloose). But it’s still basically Scott and Kelley assuring each other, in playful strings of opposing metaphors – “chore to check off on your list” vs. “lemonade in the shade” – that they don’t want to ever get into a rut.

There are a few moments of sheer giddy pleasure. “Love I’ve Found In You” is a portrait of unqualified domestic bliss, while “Singing Me Home” is all carnal lust on the open road. But these are intermittent escapes from the album’s general sense of tastefully-rendered, elegantly-packaged, thirty-something, romantic melancholy.

Bitch Stole My Look – Song Edition: Cheryl Cole v. Ingrid Michaelson on “Parachute”

November 4, 2010

When I was growing up, cover songs were usually by contemporary artists doing remakes of songs that were 15 or 20 years old: Phil Collins singing the Supremes, Club Nouveau singing Bill Withers, Joan Jett singing Tommy James and the Shondells. But back in the 50s and 60s, it wasn’t that unusual for multiple versions of the same song to compete for the same sales and airplay. This was especially true in the 50s when record labels would rush out “white” versions of R&B singles, like Pat Boone singing Fats Domino, or when any number of popular crooners would rush out singles of the latest Broadway hits. In 1955 alone, three different versions of “Unchained Melody” hit the top 10 and a fourth made it to #29.

But even in the 60s when singles were still the dominant force in pop music, you could hear multiple versions of the same song becoming hits right on top of each other. Less than a year after Gladys Knight and the Pips scored what was then their biggest pop hit “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” – it went all the way to #2 – Marvin Gaye took his own very different version of the same song all the way to #1.

But as albums and singer-songwriters became more popular in the late 60s and early 70s, it became a mark of artistic legitimacy to record original songs, to steer clear of covers. Now that singles are back, thanks to digital downloads; and now that anybody – regardless of talent level – can reach a huge internet audience via YouTube – “instant covers” are becoming more popular. So, with apologies to Joan Rivers and her Fashion Police, I’m introducing a new series here called “Bitch Stole My Look – Song Edition”, where two new versions of the same new song take each other on in a blogospheric cage match.

First up is a song called “Parachute”. The song was written and demoed by quirky indie-pop songstress Ingrid Michaelson during sessions for her excellent 2009 album Everybody, but for whatever reason, it was determined that the song didn’t really fit on the album. Then late last year, the British pop starlet Cheryl Cole, formerly of the girl group Girls Aloud, got her hands on it and included a cover of it on her will.i.am-produced debut solo album 3 Words. In March of this year, it was released as a single and went Top 10 in the UK. Here’s Cheryl’s take on it:

Cheryl Cole “Parachute”

Last month, Ingrid Michaelson released a downloadable single of her own version of the song, and put out a pretty awesome video to go with it. Here’s Ingrid:

Ingrid Michaelson “Parachute”

Frankly, I love both versions of this song almost equally. Cheryl Cole’s is obviously the slicker version, but I love its sensuality and heightened sense of romance and drama. The vocal arrangements on Michaelson’s are a lot more interesting though and especially coming after her more mainstream sounding album Everybody, it’s a sweet and much more upbeat (to both Cole’s version of “Parachute” and the rest of Michaelson’s album) reminder of the quirky adorability of her first hit “The Way I Am”. I’m split on this one. Ingrid Michaelson v. Cheryl Cole goes into overtime.

Awesome Free Download: The Baseball Project “Broadside Ballads”

August 17, 2010

D’ya like baseball? D’ya like story songs? How about story songs about baseball? How about story songs about baseball written by a supergroup of alterna-cool elder statesmen including the Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn, drummer Linda Pitmon, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows, The Minus 5 and, well, a zillion other side projects. These four got together last year and formed a band that specializes in baseball songs. They call their band – duh – The Baseball Project and they released their debut full-length album Vol. One: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails in 2009. While they’re working on Volume Two (due out next year), they’ve partnered with ESPN’s The Life this summer to provide running baseball commentary in song. And those songs – six of ‘em so far – are being made available for free dowload at the Baseball Project’s label home, the always awesome Yep Roc Records. No small feat: these songs have actually given me a reason to care about baseball this year.

I mean, seriously, with the exception of my sons’ little league games and the occasional excursion to Warner Park to watch the Madison Mallards play (and eat a few brats), I like stories and movies about baseball a lot more than I like baseball itself. I never miss a chance to watch Major League II when it comes on the TV. But when the guys in the Baseball Project start singing about “Lima Time”, the references are pretty much lost on me in the same way that that punchline in Modern Family about Diana Ross’s RCA period was mostly lost on the majority of the network prime time viewing audience. But it doesn’t matter that much: the band plays a handsome variety of laid back folk rock – think The Traveling Wilburys at a Miller Park tailgate party – that sounds great even when I don’t know the relevant background of the song’s lyrics.

Moreover, songs like “Phenom”, in which a 21-year-old ponders his ability to live up to his own hype – “Man of the hour, and that’s 400 percent of your 15 minutes of fame, and they say that I’m the most in the Washington Post… I just want to stick around for a while” – resonate outside of the sport they pay tribute to on an allegorial/metaphorical level. I love the relentless (and hopeless) optimism of “Cubs 2010″, the jangly, swinging, Woodie Guthie-ish singalong of “30 Doc”. And I’ve never been to or even cared about a baseball season opening day, but I can, nevertheless relate to the sense of excitement and expectation of “All Future and No Past” – Before a game is played! Before an out is made! – especially when the song sounds like They Might Be Giants fronting the Byrds on a Bob Dylan cover.

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