This was Blake Shelton’s promise about his new album a few months before it was released.
Ever since Shelton’s popularity skyrocketed after the release of Pure B.S. (arguably his best album, in my opinion), the quality of his music has gone on a seemingly never-ending nosedive. Startin’ Fires was even still a decent album, but beyond that, Shelton basically sold out for popularity and money and stopped caring at all about making any kind of quality music.
But Pure B.S. was released in the wake of Shelton’s divorce, and the emotion showed through. However, familiar with Shelton’s recent output, I wasn’t quite sure if he was up to the task of seeing the opportunity he had – Shelton could channel some real emotion here and get back to showing a talent he’d long since abandoned. But I was willing to give him a shot.
Sigh. This was going to be a long hour.
“She’s Got a Way With Words” is the second song on the album. The song raised some controversy before the album’s release when the lyrics were released. Controversy isn’t actually a bad thing. It’s actually a pretty honest sounding song, however, the delivery and production hurts the song. This could have worked really well as an acoustic song with minimal production aspects. But the heavy synthesizing and background chorus take an otherwise decent song and manage to make it into only a barely tolerable song.
“Bet You Still Think About Me” starts out with a nice sound. Shelton sings about how he is sure his ex still thinks about him the same way he thinks of her. I actually liked this song: it was once again a bit heavy on the production, but sounded better than its predecessor.
“Every Time I Hear That Song” was decent, but the moment Shelton sings “I Still Think About You” (multiple times as part of the chorus), I had to check to see if I was still on the previous song. The music in the song also overpowered the vocals and there was heavy production in the song.
“Came Here to Forget” is the album’s first single and the song has already been needlessly played to death. It’s a generic song, at best and was not improved at all when heard within the context of the whole album.
“Every Goodbye” reminds me of material from Brad Paisley’s third or fourth album. Lines like “there’s a reason that we’re both here right now and a reason everything didn’t work out with two sets of previous relationships at the same time” seem straight out of Paisley’s arsenal. However (at least at the time), this was something of a trademark for Paisley and he had the ability to pull it off. Coming from Shelton, it doesn’t sound the least bit authentic or original. And Paisley did (and still does) most of his own writing (or at least co-writing) (this is something I will touch on a bit later, regarding this album).
“A Guy with a Girl” is about being with the girl who everyone wants to know. Artists have done this motif before a lot better. Tim McGraw’s “She Never Lets It Go to Her Heart” and Sammy Kershaw’s “She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful” both used this theme. What made those songs work though was that there was a humility to the singer of the song…a knowledge of the luckiness to have a woman who they feel is out of there league. “A Guy with a Girl” comes off as cocky and self-serving.
“Go Ahead and Break My Heart” is a song featuring Blake’s new lover Gwen Stefani. Maybe this is a little biased, but it’s hard for me to take Shelton’s statement seriously about “knowing how he felt about the past year” when he’s already singing duets with a new lover. Am I saying that Shelton doesn’t deserve to find someone new? No, but to claim this as an album that describes how he felt about what he went through while singing a rock song with his new girlfriend seems like he’s doing everything he can do to not talk about the past year and only focusing on the future.
Included on the album is a song, “Friends” from the soundtrack to The Angry Birds Movie. Even on this album, the song feels out of place.
“Green” is confusing. The song seems tacked on to the album, considering it was on his previous album Startin’ Fires.” I also have to crack up when Shelton sings “I got a guitar I play unplugged” backed by clearly plugged-in electric guitars.
Shelton closes the album with “Savior’s Shadow,” a spiritual song. It’s probably the only truly worthwhile moment on the whole album.
Now, I haven’t discussed every song on the album, but the ones I haven’t mentioned aren’t really worth mentioning. What I’d like to take a moment to do now is to discuss songwriting. First, I want to clarify that I don’t believe it’s necessary for a singer to write every song they perform. George Strait, for example, has only really begun to delve into songwriting on his last three or four albums. But George Strait has a knack for great song selection and remaining very traditionally country.
I bring up songwriting though because of Shelton’s indication of how personal this album was supposed to be. When I think of a truly personal album, especially an album after going through something like a divorce, I think of albums like Stoney LaRue’s Aviator. I think of Emerson Hart’s Beauty in Disrepair. I think of Josh Ritter’s The Beast in Its Tracks. (Yes, I’m aware that two of those are not country, but they are personal albums written and | Honestly requires sacrifice. Honesty in music means an artist may need to be willing to sacrifice commercial success for the sake of the music and the art. This album, both as a whole, and as its individual parts, feels very generic with a lot of songs tailor made for country radio. |
After listening to If I’m Honest, I don’t feel Shelton lived up to his promise. None of these songs, even the ones I had some sense of enjoyment of, feel in any way unique to Blake Shelton.
Honestly requires sacrifice. Honesty in music means an artist may need to be willing to sacrifice commercial success for the sake of the music and the art. This album, both as a whole, and as its individual parts, feels very generic with a lot of songs tailor made for country radio.