Released: May 21, 2021
Links
Official music video: https://youtu.be/nr5dMwKaLa
TL;DR: This silly and even sometimes dumb summer song is at least pretty good all things considered.
Ordinarily I'm not a big fan of "songs of the summer" because, while I can at least admit they're catchy, in my mind a song being produced well is merely part of the full picture. I'll be the first to admit I probably place too much emphasis on songwriting in reviewing a song or album, but that's more because of what I most value in music. That's why I was so surprised that I liked this Old Dominion track when it spread all over mainstream country radio in the summer 2021. Despite its glaring flaws, it's still self-aware and quite a decent song in a lot of ways.
Old Dominion has always been simpler and radio-friendly "pop" country in their sound. While that's still very true here, this song is just enough of a step away from their "norm" to at least catch my attention. In what probably comes as no surprise, the guitars and (real) drums drive this song, but the relative lack of synthetic elements and generally relentlessly positive (albeit with hints of questions; more on that later) nature of the song makes it far more appealing in so many ways. This is especially true to a listener like me who doesn't care for drum machines in supposedly more rootsy music like country.
Matthew Ramsey is Old Dominion's lead singer, and while he's probably never going to have the raw singing ability of George Jones or Carrie Underwood or even a more comparable contemporary like Brad Paisley, he's generally pretty charismatic behind the microphone, and on a song like this that works to his advantage. He sounds like a guy who's having an absolute blast here, yet to some extent it's really easy to scoff and say "you just got broken up with, it was pretty clearly at least mostly your fault, and THIS is how you're acting in the immediate aftermath?". Regardless, I think most of us can at least relate to the wide range of emotions that follow the end of a relationship.
The lyrics aren't worth spending a ton of time of on, because a lot of them are pretty tired clichés. However, I will say that I was surprised by how much I laughed at lines like "I was drunk as a skunk eating lunch with a cross eyed bear." While this would never be confused for the pinnacle of songwriting no matter how positively you look at the song, there's just enough sharp one-liners and other positive elements that the writing at least kind of works.
This isn't a song that's in my regular rotation, but on certain playlists (summer, road trip, etc) it can almost certainly find a home for a lot of listeners.
Score: 6.5/10 (not great, but good enough)