‘Wheelhouse’ is my favorite Brad Paisley album. As a lifetime fan, I have long poured over the celebrated likes of ‘Mud On The Tires’, ‘5th Gear’ and ‘American Saturday Night’. I have jammed to ‘Time Well Wasted’, got nostalgic to ‘Who Needs Pictures’, and thoroughly enjoyed each track on ‘Part II’ and ‘This Is Country Music’. I even listened to carefully through to ‘Play’ several times, despite the fact that I tend to get bored with instrumental music. I loved it all.
I am not so much of a fangirl that I am blind to all creative mishaps, however, and I openly struggled with the confusing production and lack of lyrical originality on Brad’s most recent album ‘Moonshine In The Trunk’. It was a rushed piece of work that attempted to scoot right past the “commercial failure” of 2013’s ‘Wheelhouse’, but he’s since been rewarded with a Male Vocalist of the Year nomination (ACMs), and two #1s (‘River Bank’ and ‘Perfect Storm’). His brand new single ‘Crushin’ It’ is so radio-friendly it is likely to repeat the feat.
But I loved ‘Wheelhouse’. In fact, I think I may have now played it more than any other Brad Paisley album, largely due to its role as my shower playlist for about a year (still counts). From the opening note of nostalgia in the cut-and-pasted ‘Bon Voyage’ to the final ringing of the mandolin in the deluxe edition’s final track, an acoustic version of ‘Southern Comfort Zone’, it is Brad’s most complete album from start to finish. Weaving quite deliberately through a wide variety of topics and musical deviations, it is carefully tied together by little motifs that crop up every so often to remind you of the mysterious land you’re visiting.
‘Southern Comfort Zone’, the album’s first single and its leading track in a number of ways (including thematically), is the first to introduce such an idea. The chorus features a lyrical play on the famous American song ‘Dixie’, “Oh Dixieland, I hope you understand” he sings, linking with the first line of the song that states, “When the old Wheelhouse is the land of cotton”, in turn making reference to the first line of ‘Dixie’, “Oh I wish I was in the land of cotton”. This is brought home further with the gospel choir that begins repeating the refrain of ‘Dixie’ from the mid-point onwards, and again with Brad’s “look away” lines that are somewhat in unison but in other ways entirely isolated. The sounds of ‘Bon Voyage’ (audio clips from classic American shows that are designed to feel familiar to a Southern audience, such as The Grand Ole Opry) return during the extended outro on top of the choir’s cries of “oh, Dixie!”, making for a thoroughly reinforced tribute to all things uniquely Southern, despite being a song about going out and exploring the world. This is by far one of Brad’s most intelligent and creative tracks, and yet still manages to be a killer driving sing-a-long. Now that takes talent.
But the inter-album references don’t stop there. Third track ‘Beat This Summer’ starts in a similar way to Bon Voyage but this time spotlights the sound of an old radio with a flickering signal, the crackle of a record player needle as it hits the dust on the vinyl. From there ‘Beat This Summer’ uses synths and a cacophony of sounds and influences to construct an infuriatingly brilliant and catchy song, one that also pokes fun of summer love songs while becoming one itself. With ‘Wheelhouse’, Brad is at his most self-aware and intelligent, with more layers unfolding as you peel them back.
The intriguing references between the past and present continue on ‘Outstanding In Our Field’, a modern radio-friendly number featuring the contributions of Dierks Bentley and Hunter Hayes, but gathered behind a sharp and ear-catching Roger Miller sample. ‘Pressing On A Bruise’ draws us further into the future with a tongue-in-cheek look at heartbreak, but turns heads with the melodic rapping of Mat Kearney that gives it an urban edge without sacrificing the instrumentation. Then there’s ‘I Can’t Change The World’, an acoustic ballad with no vocal re-touching that radio refused to support, but one that should be paid attention to for its romantic portrayal of relationships in the modern, ultra-connected world.
Following this, Brad takes a dive down the rabbit hole of globalisation and cultural appropriation, with a Japanese-named song that translates to ‘You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive’. A track that Brad covered on his ‘Part II’ album, not only does it sonically pull from the Far East, it also refers to his own material and a time long gone in his career, as well as that repeating theme of escaping the south in order to appreciate it. It comes directly prior to ‘Karate’ with a clear continuation of Japanese culture, juxtaposed against a message of female empowerment and a country-style rap from legend Charlie Daniels. As we venture further we hear Eric Idle’s quirky entry on ‘Death of A Married Man’, and on ‘Harvey Bodine’ the amusingly bizarre story of a man brought back to life who enjoyed his brief moment of death for the peace he had from his wife. But ‘Tin Can On A String’ flips the tables immediately after, with a heartfelt ballad about watching the love of his life marry another man through his own volition, only to take a sneaky about-turn once again to make fun of marriage stereotypes in ‘Death of A Single Man’.
Like a magician or an author with a complex plot, Brad is busy pulling the strings and tying the strands together in places to make little puzzle pieces of sense. ‘The Mona Lisa’ and ‘Runaway Train’ are tributes to powerful women, while ‘Those Crazy Christians’ embarks on a clever way of honouring his faith. ‘Accidental Racist’ (a duet with LL Cool J) was the most talked about song for many reasons, but when people were struck by the perceived lack of sensitivity and trivialization of race relations, they were also missing Brad’ bravery on tackling such a subject head on. It includes multiple references to the musical motifs introduced at the beginning of the album, most notably a repetition of the “Oh Dixieland, I hope you understand” line from ‘Southern Comfort Zone’. In a way, despite all the outrage and heated discussion, it becomes one of the most important songs on the album for tying together Brad’s mission statement about exploring outside of the south. He pays more than enough tribute to his homeland and the folks who came before, but offsets this with a push for progress, knowledge, life experience, and getting out of your comfort zone. Brad got out of his musical and lyrical comfort zones with this album, covering topics rarely (if ever) touched upon in country music, or even music in general. He wants to bring people together, across geographical, social, and technological divides. He wants to pull the past, the present and the future together to really tell his story.
That message of unity becomes even more apparent on the track that ends the standard edition, ‘Officially Alive’. Picking up a similar vocal snippet to ‘The Mona Lisa’ and combining electronic and traditional country elements, he goes on to sing about truly the most important thing in life: creating the next generation. While other songs about having kids can be unbelievably cheesy and clichéd, Brad captures the passion, the fear, the joy, and the rush of emotion upon holding your child for the first time in a wonderfully honest and quirky manner. His message, in getting out of his ‘Wheelhouse’, is to cross boundaries and bring people and culture and everything closer. But he does it in a way that is unique and original, in a way that subverts the norm and requires you to think in order to take your own interpretation away from it.
People criticize ‘Wheelhouse’ for not being commercial enough (it had two #2 hits, a top 30 and a top 20, and sold hundreds of thousands of copies but who’s counting), for being messy and for being too random and unpredictable. Yet it is his most cohesive (sonically and lyrically), intelligent, interesting, self-aware, and musically proficient work to date (every single sound heard was recorded, nothing was looped like is the norm in Nashville). ‘Wheelhouse’ is one of my favorite records of all time for all of these reasons and for just producing damn good songs to listen to, and most people didn’t give it the time of day it required. They couldn’t be bothered to try. And maybe that’s our problem as listeners, that while country radio has dumbed down we also have encouraged music that is easy to digest and that doesn’t make us think. Brad made me think, he made me laugh, and he made me cry with ‘Wheelhouse’. So when he brought out ‘Moonshine In The Trunk’ less than eighteen months later, with a host of songs that pandered to the mainstream and were cluttered with attempts to push boundaries in a shallow way, I was sad. Sad for music, sad that Brad had given in and felt like his risk hadn’t paid off because Nashville execs weren’t playing ball.
I appreciated and continue to appreciate ‘Wheelhouse’ as a fantastic piece of art on a daily basis. You should too.
