One could argue all day where Brent Kissel's We Were That Song falls on the country-pop spectrum, but the point is almost moot, anyway: this album is terrible. It's so bad, it made me reconsider everything I believe about pop.
Kissel's voice is curdled, sickly sweet and devoid of nutrition or pleasure, like cool whip. The stories he tells are ones that we have heard before: the back road anthem, the one where he gushes about Springsteen and the one about his baby daughter. The back road anthems sound made in a Detroit boardroom, trying to sell F150s. The one about Springsteen rips off Eric Church and Ronald Reagan's purposeful misreading of "Born in the U.S.A."; Kissel isn't smart enough to play rhetorical games with nostalgia like Church — or even Reagan.
The worst song is the one about a man who would never cry until his daughter was born. It's sentimental treacle, resting on a whole thicket of dangerously gendered stereotypes. It's an ugly song made uglier by its cynically tinselled cheapness.
This is the worst country album of the year, and a nadir for an artist who is talented and seems to have distinct potential.
(Universal Nashville)Kissel's voice is curdled, sickly sweet and devoid of nutrition or pleasure, like cool whip. The stories he tells are ones that we have heard before: the back road anthem, the one where he gushes about Springsteen and the one about his baby daughter. The back road anthems sound made in a Detroit boardroom, trying to sell F150s. The one about Springsteen rips off Eric Church and Ronald Reagan's purposeful misreading of "Born in the U.S.A."; Kissel isn't smart enough to play rhetorical games with nostalgia like Church — or even Reagan.
The worst song is the one about a man who would never cry until his daughter was born. It's sentimental treacle, resting on a whole thicket of dangerously gendered stereotypes. It's an ugly song made uglier by its cynically tinselled cheapness.
This is the worst country album of the year, and a nadir for an artist who is talented and seems to have distinct potential.