It has become cool to like country, but you're only cool if you like Johnny Cash and Mike Ness. You must under no circumstances like pop country acts like Jill Johnson.
Guess what? I'm uncool!
I bought this record cos I wanted to review a Swedish country act in a blog called "A Swede on American culture". I thought it was the natural thing to do, though I suspected this record would be shite, but it isn't, I'm very plesantly surprised.
What does it sound like, then? Well, it sounds like Jill Johnson is the amazing three-legged woman, one leg being Dolly Parton, the second leg Lucinda Williams and the third Kings of Leon.
Jill Johnson stands as steadily on all three legs and is as good when it comes to ballads about heartaches, as when it comes to rockier tunes about, er, well, heartache. If there is one big thing to criticise her for, it might be the lyrics. She comes across sounding like country music heartaches 101. It's what you expect from a poppy country album like this and it means I have to give her a somewhat lower grade, cos she can't blame it on being Swedish, she has a splendid command of the English language, sounding really American, and should be able to write with a wee bit more fantasy.
As I said, it's a poppy country album and somewhat stereotypical, so I wouldn't recommend it to die hard outlaw country fans, but people who like poppy country music will definitely like this. If you like Lucinda Williams or Dolly Parton, you'll like this. Even if you don't get it anyway, it's good music!
A surprisingly good record like this gets 69,3% in level of satisfaction.
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