Ed Sheeran—“Make It Rain”
#34
It’s interesting to hear Sheeran sing someone else’s material: stripped of all his convoluted lyrical and musical tics, he turns out to be a decent singer—controlled, intense, even moving at times. “Make It Rain” doesn’t justify it’ length or its mournful tempo, and the lyrics often don’t make much more sense than Sheeran’s own, but this is a pleasant surprise. He should try out this sort of simplicity on his own records.
Matt McAndrew—“The Blower’s Daughter”
#40
Lilly Wood & The Prick and Robin Schulz—“Prayer In C”
#87
This has the darkest lyric imaginable, going from a broken relationship to apocalypse in just a few lines (with forgiveness denied in both cases), but for Robin Schulz it’s just a way to follow up “Waves” with another light, rolling groove. It sounds as fine as before—and almost exactly the same—and makes no sense at all.
Sheppard—“Geronimo”
#90
An Australian melange of 90s indie rock/pop, as bland and empty as they come. If that doesn’t sound bad enough, imagine it becoming a crowd favorite at Washington Redskins or Cleveland Indians games. Since Australia’s treatment of its indigenous people is no better than ours, I won’t even give Sheppard’s cluelessness the benefit of the doubt. Also, since their album is called Bombs Away and not “Geronimo”, I’m assuming someone in the band or at their label had a sense of how offensive the title is, but apparently not enough to change the lyric. Which makes them worse than clueless.
Blake Shelton Featuring Ashley Monroe—“Lonely Tonight”
#95
Only the second single from his latest album and it already sounds like barrel scraping. The promise he was showing last year seems to have disappeared. All that’s left is a skilled vocalist wasting his time—not to mention Ashley Monroe’s—on generic material. Considering Shelton’s schedule over the last couple of years, maybe he’s just exhausted, but he barely sounds like he’s trying.
Randy Houser—“Like A Cowboy”
#98
“Like a Cowboy” is an ecapsulation of everything that’s wrong with mainstream country: overloud, overwrought, overlong. If you listen to it in the right frame of mind, though, especially to Houser’s vocals, it becomes an outrageous parody of “sensitive” male country. The way he sings the second verse (note the stress on the word “tucked”) should have you rolling on the floor. The fact that Houser probably means every word makes it sadder, not funnier, but not enough that I can stop laughing.
Taylor John Williams—“Royals”
#100