As a music critic every once in a while you receive an album that from the very first makes you just shake your head no. For starlet hopeful Laura McCormick it began with the title to her Big Radio Country ambition album, “Box Full of Trouble.” Without hearing a note I knew the record wouldn’t be anything worth listening to, let alone writing about. There are so many musicians out there scraping for the meager platform Surviving the Golden Age provides it feels like a shame to waste space just to trash an album.
With all that being said, it’s important to remember that Ms. McCormick is a real person and to thrash her artistic ambition without mercy does a disservice to both her and myself. A person’s life can be judged by their enemies, so who am I to cowardly attack the beautiful and talented, young Ms. McCormick from the comfort of obscurity? So what her song writing is a clichéd attempt at the trailer park femme fatal popularized by the Dixie Chicks or Carrie Underwood from, oh God who cares how many years ago? It may be stale, it may be forced, and it may be amateur at best but at least the Nashville native Ms. McCormick is doing something with her life.
If one had any ambition in life they would attack the real culprit in this scenario. Ms. McCormick is but a product of her time. And if she’s created a female persona antithesis to the household names of the misogynistic Bro Country lot then she’s not to blame. No, any critic worth his salt would instead call out that friend of NAMBLA Jason Aldean for his pseudo-song-writer country rebel personality that Big Radio Country pisses down America’s throat. Or better yet, what about the will-they-or-won’t-they? relationship between those cowboys in Florida Georgia Line? They are more responsible for the trite contributions of starry eyed young vocalist chasing that neon rainbow than lack of organic talent, respect for the fine tradition inherent in country music, or a willingness to put the actual human condition on the line for what can only anymore be laughingly called art.
Country music has been hijacked by soulless sycophantic corporate interests and a complicit, lazy demographic. Ms. Laura McCormick is a pretty young girl with serious pipes. She cannot be blamed for this joke of a record. Though it’s doubtful Box Full of Trouble will garner much attention at all, Ms. McCormick is a valid contender for the artifice of future recording projects.
Rating: 3.5/10
MP3: Laura McCormick “Feel The Fire”
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