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Shock'n' Y'all
11/11/2003 9:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Mike Lipton
Toby Keith has become the Howard Stern of country music; the kind of artist that critics love to hate, and fans love to love. After a taste of the success that his post-9/11, terrorist-baiting "Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American)" generated, Keith throws down the gauntlet--and any vestige of Political Correctness.
His latest starts out innocent enough. "I Love This Bar" is a celebration of one of the things his fans--and most Americans--like most: drinking beer. It's a solid country tune--big and beefy, with nice touches of Hammond organ--with more than a few (updated) nods to Merle Haggard's classic anthem to breadbasket America "Okie From Muskogee." And to make sure everyone "gets it" (i.e. buys it), Keith name checks every group from hookers and hitchhikers to Yuppies, bikers and "high-techs." From there, Keith describes his ideal gal in the catchy '70s SoCal-styled rocker "Whiskey Girl": "tight on the top with a belly button ring/a little tattoo in between." She also eschews wine, roses, champagne and margaritas for whiskey, a '69 Mustang and "something with a little more edge and a little more pain." Another rocker, "Sweet," continues the theme with a scenario that finds the country boy scoring with an uptown girl who's "stacked up high with perfect wheels." Oddly, in the easygoing "If I Was Jesus," Keith passes on the opportunity to impart anything of substance and opts for a fairly mundane (if not unique) love song. With a Tex-Mex feel, "Nights I Can't Remember, Friends I'll Never Forget" recalls Keith's wild days with his old pals ("we partied through college... never did get a degree") with a bit of misogyny ("he downed every beer in the cooler just tryin' to drink that poor thing pretty"). Finally, in "The Critic," a campy, half-spoken acoustic piece, Keith portrays the stereotypical music reviewer ("flunked junior high band... tried to write a song once and couldn't make it rhyme").
While, lyrically, Keith's material aims for the lowest common denominator, even songs like the shameless arena-rock ballad "American Soldier," are a pleasant change from Nashville's typical assembly line product. The instrumentation offers plenty of sonic surprises and the arrangements are hardly stock country fare. The 12-song set closes with a couple of live, solo acoustic "Bus Songs" (songs written on the bus to "entertain the boys"). "The Taliban Song" champions country music's brand of patriotism ("those big U.S. jets came flying in one night and they dropped little bombs all over their holy land... we'll bid a fair adieu and give a big boner to the Taliban") while "Weed With Willie" commemorates sharing some herb with one of the original country outlaws.
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