A couple of years ago I bought all five of Eric Church\u2019s albums (see playlists at end).\u00a0 I had seen him perform a couple of time on one or the other of the Country Music Awards shows and I thought he was head and shoulders above the stuff that was getting played on the radio stations.\u00a0 When all that Bro Country stuff started up ten years ago it sounded so awful and contrived and just plain stupid that I was glad whenever I found someone who could write meaningful lyrics and talk about something resembling real life.<\/p>\n
Church portrays himself as a working-class kid who grew up in a small town filled with work that got his hands dirty and Friday nights filled with booze and girls.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what he writes about.\u00a0 But he also sings about some less simplistic goings on.\u00a0 His first album \u201cSinners Like Me\u201d has a song called \u201cLightning\u201d that is the execution day recollection of a man who killed a liquor store clerk while attempting to rob the store.\u00a0 We get his thoughts seeing the mother of the boy he killed and his own daughter sitting in the viewing area.\u00a0 It\u2019s a powerful and skillfully done song.\u00a0 And that album is full of good songs.<\/p>\n
In his later albums he starts singing about his life as a grown man and we hear about his wife and kids and what it means to be a wild kid who has to become a grown up.\u00a0 And to other grown ups this might resonate a lot more than another song about Jack Daniels kicking Eric\u2019s butt on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n
On the five albums I\u2019ve got he has about sixty songs and I\u2019d say I only truly dislike three songs.\u00a0 And one of those is his tribute to pot which I guess is one of his vices.<\/p>\n
There are twenty songs that I like a whole lot.\u00a0 And the rest are regular good, meaning I can listen to them in the rotation without getting tired of them. \u00a0I think that\u2019s actually very good.\u00a0 Church has an interesting voice and I\u2019d describe his music as country rock.<\/p>\n
If you want a song writer that can write both the Saturday Night honky-tonk songs and also more thoughtful and realistic stories then Eric Church is worth a listen to see if he clicks with you.\u00a0 I can say I highly recommend him based on my standards. I\u2019ve bolded the songs I especially like.<\/p>\n
Sinners Like Me (2006)<\/p>\n
Carolina (2009)<\/p>\n
Chief (2011)<\/p>\n
The Outsiders (2014)<\/p>\n
Mr. Misunderstood<\/p>\n
A couple of years ago I bought all five of Eric Church\u2019s albums (see playlists at end).\u00a0 I had seen him perform a couple of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[552,551,237],"tags":[555,1309,2869],"class_list":["post-13301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-country-music-reviews","category-music-reviews","category-reviews","tag-country-music","tag-country-music-review","tag-eric-church"],"yoast_head":"\n