Lainey Wilson’s new album “Whirlwind” released on August 23rd is absolute country perfection. Wilson combines gut-wrenching emotional tracks with simple acoustics and upbeat dance tunes to create a country album that’s a future classic and transcends the typical scope of the country genre to make something impressively versatile. Wilson opens her album with “Keeping Up With Jones”, a rage-fueled, western brawl encapsulated in four minutes with passionate vocals and a striking bridge. The track's ending is mesmerizingly repetitive, all building up to a hypnotizing repetition of the song’s first lines.
The second track on the album speaks entirely for itself- “Country’s Cool Again” is Wilson’s commentary on the changing public opinion of the genre that raised her. But instead of getting angry at new people entering the country genre, she encourages the growing community saying “That’s a trend I can get behind”.
“Good Horses” is the third track on the album and features fellow country singer Miranda Lambert, known for her track “Mama’s Broken Heart”. Together, the two create a track with an easy-flowing melody that’s easy to get lost in and a perfectly soothing country harmony. They use the line “good horses come home” to describe the common phrase “If you love someone let them go and if they come back to you, it was meant to be”. They also turn the lyrics back on themselves, giving themselves faith that they will find their own way back to their people if they ever really need them again. They explain all of this through a horse who runs away from home but finds his own way back to where he’s meant to be.- “If you wanna love me, you don’t need a rope”. One of the major stand-out songs on the album is “Broken Hearts Still Beat”. True to its title, this track is a devastating tell-all about life’s worst heartbreak. This is Wilson’s testament to being strong and moving on, despite how impossible it may seem. She portrays all of these devastating emotions with gut-wrenching lines like “I thought if you’d ever let me go, that’d be the end of the end of my rope”. The delivery of these lines is emotionally impeccable.
In the chorus, she sings “Boy thanks to you, it may never be the way it used to be, but broken hearts still beat.” This song is definitely the crowning jewel of the album. Tear-jerking and beautifully cruel to listen to, Wilson created a track that’s expertly true to its genre and expertly unique and emotional. This track deserves to be a modern classic.
In the album’s title track, “Whirlwind”, Wilson takes on a much more pop sound, as opposed to the acoustic, country sound of the beginning section of the album. “Whirlwind” marks a turning point in the album’s story, using its title to describe a person who shakes up the singer’s life- “You’re a whirlwind...Loving you is a breeze”. Out of all the songs on the album, this one is one of the most upbeat and easiest to dance to, more pop and happier than several of the other very emotional tracks from Wilson, especially after “Broken Hearts Still Beat”, this song is perfectly complimentary.
Wilson closes the album with “Whiskey Colored Crayon”- a much calmer, acoustic track compared to a lot of the other songs. In this final track, Wilson takes us back to a character in his childhood. The simpler musical style emulates an element of child-like simplicity, while also explaining the impact that parental behaviors like drinking have on children. The premise of this song is about a child who is told to draw his family, and when he draws his father, “He raised his hand and said ‘teacher, I can’t draw daddy. Do you have a whiskey-colored crayon?”
This song is an extremely emotional end to the album. It slightly takes listeners away from the love stories explained in the rest of the tracks, and instead zooms out to where relationship issues begin. Wilson handles these things so expertly and beautifully. “Whiskey Colored Crayon” is a song that will make people cry, and leaves the album on a completely unforgettable note.
Lainey Wilson was impeccable in this album. So beautifully concise and expertly genre-driven, while including meaningful stories and doing it in a way that is so understandable and palatable for country fans and non-country fans alike.
Reviewed by Steph Stone
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