2012 IN NASHVILLE COUNTRY
Jerrod Niemann
Free the Music
(Sea Gayle/Arista Nashville)
Here's what I wrote in the PopMatters Country Best-Of, shortly before learning that Jerrod Niemann is not really country:
Keeping Nashville horn players employed since 2010, this goofball proudly endorses the man in the moon and insists that he is a man, not a fraction. (Maybe that’ll end the rumors.) Niemann’s post-Big & Rich country mixes metaphors and styles with abandon, its exquisitely chiseled production sweeping you from song to song. Free the Music veers from Beck to honky-tonk weeper, the ominous “Get On Up” to the lite tropical “I’ll Have to Kill the Pain”. It all seems like breezy showboating until “Only God Could Love You More”, a massive ballad that’ll awaken your inner 14-year-old to the knowledge that love is awesome. God, too; though he’s less prominent in Niemann’s cosmology than alcohol or Jessie James, who has the courtesy to rhyme with “Guessing Games”, the title of a dark new wave strutter. “Do you know what is completely obnoxious?,” asks Niemann of his mystery woman. Sometimes the answer is Jerrod Niemann, but he’s always real nice about it.
And, just because I'd like to preserve the discussion, traditionalist commenter Al3x 0rr proposed the following:
"I feel a a good trad country album should top a dance-pop album marketed as country any day in a list of best country releases. A terrific album exemplifying the best aspects of a genre's style should be among the qualities looked for in a great album when talking about releases within that particular genre."
He also noted, "I just gave a listen to the Jerrod Niemann album and I'd love to know what makes this country and not lite-rock pop soul." He went on, "Did y'all actually hear [Marty Stuart's unmentioned-in-the-list] "Nashville, Vol. 1: Tear the Woodpile Down" and decide that it was simply not among the ten best country albums released in 2012? If you can explain to me how Jerrod Niemann's album is a better "country" album, I'd love to hear it."
I responded,
Alex, since I wrote up your three main offenders, I’ll go. Really good comment, btw, but I disagree with your philosophical point that “a good trad country album should top a dance-pop album marketed as country any day in a list of best country releases. A terrific album exemplifying the best aspects of a genre's style should be among the qualities looked for in a great album when talking about releases within that particular genre.”
I don’t presume to know what country SHOULD sound like; but I do know when something sounds country or seems country. Carrie Underwood and Jerrod Niemann sound country -- at least half their songs deal in standard country tropes and incorporate traditional country instrumentation. I could see the argument that Taylor Swift’s current album doesn’t sound country, but she’s enough identified with the genre and beloved by its fans, who consider themselves country fans even if you don’t, that she counts too. So of all the people who I’m letting into the genre, I pick the ones I like best, in order, because maybe the ones who aren’t as “traditional” are teaching me something I didn’t know about the genre. Maybe Jerrod Niemann’s bizarre sense of humor is one of those heretofore unexplored “best aspects of a genre’s style” that you mention. (Although really he’s not too far from the Statler Brothers.) This is how genres thrive and continue to speak to people! When they stop doing so, THAT’S how genres die.
I won’t pretend to know the Stuart album well enough for some head-to-head cage match. It sounds good, actually, but I prefer Niemann’s humor, instrumental variety, and occasional goopy romantic excess. (Not something I’m generally in favor of, but he makes it work.) I identify with him more and I’d rather listen to his album. And he’s definitely country! Are you gonna tell me “Whiskey Kinda Way” isn’t country? Regardless of whether he’d have been considered country in any other decade, we’re not living in any other decade, you know?
(Somewhat better than Dwight Yoakam's 3 Pears.)
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