Alan Jackson Is Doing What He Does Best
On 02-03-2008
at 6:07 pm
Please don’t judge me, but I am an 80’s kid. I grew up listening to top forty music during the worst decade the art had to offer. I listened to artists such as, Wham, Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Air Supply. I know that someday I will have to answer for my past sins. When the 90’s hit, it was like someone turned on a different part of my brain. Country music replaced all of that bubble gum pop that was polluting my ears. When I first started to pick out favorites, I would see-saw between Garth Brooks and Vince Gill, but then I heard Alan Jackson. Here in the Real World was the second country album that I had ever bought, and was completely hooked. I had never heard a country album before that was almost driven more by the fiddle and pedal steel than the lead guitar. The title track and “Wanted,” were songs that reminded us what had been missing in country music for quite some time, great lyrics. Country pop was becoming the standard, and songs were almost too polished and had lost it’s perspective. Jackson’s album changed that paradigm, or he rather switched country music back to it’s original point of view,simple Lyrics. For example, let’s look at the song “Chasing That Neon Rainbow.” The main object of focus is himself. He’s not narcissistic, he’s just showing everybody what he is about, and how he got to where he is now. He ties it in with mentioning his family, and then uses something tangeable, a radio. Alan not only went for traditional country with this album, he also went for nostalgia. If you can somehow make a person go to a different time in their lives mentally, then you know that you did something right.
Alan has weaved in and out of this mold with some of his later albums, especially with Red on a Rose. It was a little too introspective and contrived. Alison Krauss did a great job in producing this album, but Alan needed to approach it more with a singer/songwriter mentality, rather than sounding like he was releasing another album for the sake of releasing another album. However, it sounds like that we in for a treat. Alan is going to be releasing his new album on March 4. Billboard Magazine actually quoted him in saying, “I always come back to what I came to Nashville to do, and that’s make traditional-sounding country music, this album bounces back to that.” The name of the album will be Good Time, and will feature songs written by Alan Jackson. Yes you heard me, Jackson has written every song on his new album. If it’s anything like what he first started out with, I think that country music is going to welcome this album with open arms.
