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Label: Sony/BMG
Sound/Style: Rock-influenced country, with some Caribbean flavor on the side
By Steve Morley
Country singer Kenny Chesney straddles the line between the rafter-swinging antics of Garth Brooks and the more conservative presentation of Alan Jackson or Merle Haggard. His approach has won him top-grossing concert receipts and a mantle full of awards. He’s a paradox of sorts whose college education and marketing savvy does nothing to diminish his blue-collar appeal. His music convincingly combines rock guitar acrobatics and a die-hard country mentality without compromising either. Many of his thirty-odd hits have been romantically inclined, but recent years have cemented Chesney’s rep as a purveyor of good times, an image that draws heavily on his affection for the sun and sand of exotic locales. If there’s anything the least bit questionable about all the bases he covers, it hasn‘t been obvious until now. His latest album, Just Who I Am: Poets and Pirates, contains the usual themes of extended adolescence and unapologetic hedonism, which rub uncomfortably against strains of faith, social commentary and adult responsibility.
On “Wife and Kids,” he examines the downside of single life in a sentimental lyric that projects an ideal domestic scene: “I still hope some day I'll have a wife and kids/ Smiling faces running to the door when I walk in/ Saying daddy's home, you were gone too long/ What'd you bring me, swing me, let me show you what I did.”
“Don’t Blink” also upholds family values in the words of a hundred and two-year-old man who cautions that the truly meaningful things in life are the ones that’ll pass you by if you’re not paying attention. (“Don't blink/ You just might miss your babies growing like mine did/ Turning into moms and dads next thing you know/ Your better half of fifty years is there in bed/ And you're praying God takes you instead/ Trust me friend a hundred years goes faster than you think/ Don't blink.”)
He challenges preconceptions about respectability in “Dancin’ for the Groceries,” a tale of a young single mother whose job as a stripper is a sacrifice she makes to meet her children's needs. The sympathetic lyric offers well-rendered details of her divided heart, but attempts no moral judgment, leaving listeners to ponder the acceptability of undressing for a living. (“She's dancin' for the groceries/ She's dancin' for the rent/ She's dancin' for the credit card that she's already spent/ In sequins and in laces, she's dancing for the braces/ So her kids can have a perfect smile someday/ Smiling while she dances, is the price she has to pay.”)
From that shaky moral middle ground, it’s only a short distance to the unrestrained indulgence in the reggae-influenced “Got a Little Crazy,” which shrugs off the nocturnal indiscretions detailed in its cleverly turned but fully unrepentant verses. The song “Demons,” while hardly uplifting, is at least honest and sober about the grip that personal vices can have.
On “Never Wanted Nothing More,” the album’s polarities come together, however awkwardly. In the space of three and a half minutes, the same young man who lived for his first pickup truck and the loss of innocence it soon afforded becomes a committed married adult and has a conversion experience. While the lyric touches rightly upon the way our desires change as we grow, the rapid-fire ease of these major life transitions rings a tad hollow. It’s hard to fault a song that ends in salvation, yet the hint of contrivance in the final verse seems as much Hollywood as hallelujah.
As basic entertainment, the majority of these songs do their job with typical Nashville vigor. With some benefit of the doubt, the “poets and pirates” conceit in the record’s title could be addressing the contradictions in human nature. This point isn’t made clearly enough on Just Who I Am, though, to assure us that the pirate – after enjoying the poetry – isn’t going to make the poet walk the plank.
Audio Clips
"Never Wanted Nothing More"
"Don't Blink"
"Just Not Today"
"Shiftwork"
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