Chris Lane is the flagship artist for new label Big Loud Records, a record label subsidiary of Big Loud Shirt Publishing and Big Loud Mountain Studios and management. The label has been slowly but surely coming together over the past year or so, building their staff and prepping Chris for his big debut. For reference, the company that Big Loud grew out of helped support the likes of Florida Georgia Line, Dallas Smith, Rodney Clawson, Craig Wiseman, Joey Moi and Sarah Buxton in addition to new signee Chris, and I think you’ll agree aside from Sarah it’s a bit of a dodgy list. I know Rodney and Craig have written good songs, but you know… some of their track records aren’t great.
This won’t be Chris Lane’s first time at country radio. In 2014 he released ‘Broken Windshield View’ under Big Loud Mountain management, but that was a generic bro-country track with a rock vibe that only reached #56 on Country Airplay. However, during one writing/recording session earlier this year, Chris randomly broke into a falsetto singing some groove-based pop song and producer Joey Moi decided to go further down that direction. In February, Jesse Frasure (‘Sun Daze’, ‘Crash And Burn’) collaborated with Sarah Buxton (‘Don’t Let Me Be Lonely’, ‘Stupid Boy’) and Abe Stoklasa (‘Portland, Maine’, ‘The Driver’) to write ‘Fix’, a soul track designed to go on Abe’s record. Because it was for Abe, country didn’t even come up, so the lyrics were littered with drug references (to describe how love is like an addiction) and a few swear words, and came with a heavy groove.
But the song ended up with Chris because Sarah is a staff writer over at Big Loud, and manager Seth England heard it. He thought it was perfect for the new direction they were taking Chris in, and persuaded the writers to let them have it. Joey Moi apparently “countrified it” (read: added a banjo) and they put some real instruments in place of programming.
But, as you can probably imagine, this is not a country song. By any stretch of the imagination. This makes Florida Georgia Line look country, for God’s sake. There’s the reverbed R&B atmosphere of Sam Hunt, the faux-soul/disco beat of Thomas Rhett and the melody and vocal delivery of someone like Nick Jonas. Chris’ voice is not particularly twangy at all so he doesn’t even have that retaining some falsified roots in his favor, and while it’s fairly catchy in general it’s 100% a pop song. Honestly, it makes ‘Kick The Dust Up’ sound like the music of the hillbillies. It actually provides the lead-in for Luke Bryan to release the title track of his album to radio next year, after the atrocious ‘Home Alone Tonight’ has had its run, because ‘Kill The Lights’ is rather disco-influenced and he’ll want to look like he’s picking up on the new trend.
I know this is going to be a hit, and that makes me sad. It’s not a bad song, particularly as I know that it wasn’t written to be country, it was just poached and squeeze to fit – but it just reinforces the idea that country can’t be country to do well. That country radio needs to constantly chase pop and other genres to attract audiences. That traditional country (or even modern country) is no longer commercially viable. All of those things are untrue. And I don’t deny people the right to listen to and enjoy what they want, but it seems a shame that really great new country music (that is progressive but keeps the roots of the genre in mind) gets pushed out and ignored because the whole mainstream industry is so obsessed with sounding nothing like it did even five years ago. All genres have to evolve and change, that is true – but when something doesn’t even resemble a tiny part of what it was a few years prior, that’s not evolving, that’s just creating something different and changing the label.
Feel free to bitch at me and tell me I’m a 60 year old man who can’t get with the times (23 year old woman who likes Carrie Underwood, Jason Isbell and Dolly Parton in equal measure), but you can’t just tell me something is country and have me believe it. And I wish Chris the best of luck, but he is not country and should not be categorized as such.
Originally posted here.
