If we set aside the debate over the merits of the Cobronavirus trend for a moment, the writing is lazy and formulaic even by these low standards.I won’t mince words here: The lyrics are complete rubbish. For a group as talented and thoughtful as Little Big Town, this performance is a massive disappointment, and is more of a case against reviving their mainstream career than for it. The group fails even when they succeed: Much like with Jake Owen’s “If He Ain’t Gonna Love You,” the group fills the shoes of the clueless, unsympathetic, party-hardy narrator a little too well, making the listener recoil from the track rather than drawing them in.
I think Jimi Westbrook and Philip Sweet are splitting the lead vocals here, but they’re completely devoid of their usual tone, and the overall vocal chemistry of the group is pretty shaky here as well.
The amazing thing about the vocals for this track is how unrecognizable they are: Its sounds like a group of random people shouting into a microphone, and I wouldn’t have known it was Little Big Town had the YouTube video not been released by their channel (the weird vocal effects don’t help matters either). It’s the perfect mix to make a bad song even worse, and whoever put this thing together needs to have their access to the recording studio revoked until further notice. The sounds captures everything I can’t stand about this trend: The pointless alcoholism, the selfish, devil-may-care attitude, and the sleazy feel of the whole situation. The horns definitely make the arrangement stand out and I’d normally be happy for such a decision, but here they only add an extra layer of slime to a mix that already feels too dark and ominous thanks to an overreliance on minor chords and the prominence of the percussion. An electric guitar provides some simple rhythm work and a few stabs, but it doesn’t really contribute anything meaningful to the mix. There are two primary instrument groups here: The percussion mix (which incorporates everything from hand claps to hand-played drums to a standard drum set) and the horn section (a single horn provides a solo for the intro, but several horns march in lockstep for the majority of the song). I mentioned that the best Cobronavirus songs use their sound to establish a suitable atmosphere, but the production here shows that this can work against a song as well. This song is a gross, nihilistic piece of garbage even by Cobronavirus standards, and rings especially hollow in light of the events of the past week. This brings us to their latest single release “Wine, Beer, Whiskey,” and frankly, it’s been a while since listening to a song has made me this angry. The quartet is all but finished in country music, but that isn’t stopping them from blatantly trend-hopping in hopes of a miracle career resuscitation. I wrote an epitaph for Little Big Town’s career last year, and nothing’s changed since then: “Over Drinking” only made it to #49 on Billboard’s airplay chart, and “The Daughters” didn’t reach the airplay chart at all. A better title for this song would have been “Disgusting, Disheartening, Lazy.”
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