‘Hunter Hayes’: The Only Artist To Have Less Edge Than Carrie Underwood’. Perhaps they will choose a different title for his autobiography than that, but that is a fair assessment of Hunter Hayes’ music and his public persona. The actual music isn’t too bad (apart from ‘21’) but there is not much for me, as an actual 21 year-old male, to get on board with. Something about his saccharine, far-too-inoffensive public image really turns me off, not coming across as ‘holier-than-thou’ as Carrie can, but just hard to relate to and focused towards the Disney audience. The really frustrating thing is that I know Hunter is better than this, having written great songs like ‘Still Fallin’’ and ‘Rainy Season’.
His ‘The 21 Project’ continues in this vein, with some very saccharine pop love-songs and a bit of mandolin and banjo added for good measure. My not-so-hidden 14-year-old girl side to my personality loves it, but it is just all so superficial. I’m going to ignore his single ‘21’ because it is awful, and should definitely have been allowed to die before it was heard by a human being.
‘Where It All Begins’ featuring Lady Antebellum is really nice though, and Hunter and Charles’ vocals blend beautifully together. If Hunter joined Lady Antebellum that would be a fantastic move for both of them, but Dave would still be my favourite. The song itself has a great catchy melody, and sounds more Lady Antebellum than Hunter Hayes, being more adult-contemporary pop than Hunter has done recently. I’m a big fan of this song, and it does show that Hunter has still got it, it just needs to be let out more often.
‘Young And In Love’ begins so well, with a beautiful rich acoustic guitar picking introduction and lovely understated vocals in the first verse. It steadily builds up into the bridge, which is still good… and then the chorus hits, which builds up with the electric guitar and drums. It still isn’t exactly the biggest sound Hunter has produced, but the lyrics are much more reminiscent of some of his more Disney songs which are targeted at more non-country audiences. I am almost certainly doing this song a disservice, because it is quite catchy and nice to listen to, but it has the potential to be truly good, and it falls short in the chorus which is disappointing.
‘Someday Girl’ is reminiscent of one of Hunter’s ‘UK-released’ singles, which were just pop remixed versions of his existing singles. If you missed them, they were fairly awful, even though the songs that were remixed were OK, namely ‘Tattoo’ and ‘Light Me Up’. It has some mandolin, but is dominated by electronic drums and electric guitar, and has a decidedly pop feel to it, even though a few of the tracks so far on the EP have been pretty good acoustic Hunter. It says it all that ‘Someday Girl’ isn’t included on the acoustic disc of this three-disc EP, since that may show up the weaknesses of the song without all its electronic bells and whistles.
‘Saint Or A Sinner’ is easily the best song on the EP, and is definitely up there with songs that Hunter has done in the past as well. Even though it is still heavy on the production side, it is melodically nice, and lyrically it is up to the standards that Hunter should be setting himself as a good songwriter. This is the kind of song Hunter should be exploring, because it is for a target audience that can appreciate good music, rather than a young audience that will grow out of it before looking for more adult-targeted artists, whether that be in country, pop or hip-hop and electro.
I find it hard to recommend Hunter Hayes to people I respect, but I will tentatively say that this EP is worth a listen. I’m not a big fan of buying individual songs, since I am very much a fan of listening to a whole record and getting a feel for the artist, but with Hunter, his back catalogue is quite polarising for me, and so I would be tempted to take his good material and leave the others. Either way, I will say that this EP/album is a step in the right direction, as long as you discount the abomination that is ‘21’.
Originally posted here.
