Single Review: ‘People Loving People’ – Garth Brooks
10 years ago Liv Carter Comments Off on Single Review: ‘People Loving People’ – Garth Brooks
Songwriters: Lee Thomas Miller, Chris Wallin, Busbee
Garth Brooks‘ much anticipated come-back has been marred by delays and cancellations, but we now finally have a new single, ‘People Loving People.’
“Doctor, you ain’t got a pill / For whatever’s making this world ill,” he starts out the song written by Lee Thomas Miller, Chris Wallin, and Busbee. What follows is a ‘why can’t we all just get along’ anthem that definitely has its big heart in the right place. In a society disgraced by civil, human, and constitutional rights violations, and where political discourse has been reduced to jingoistic sloganeering, it’s not like we can’t stand to hear this message. It is quite likely therefor, that recent events spurred the change away from ‘Tacoma’ as the first new single off the new album.
If you cast your memory back to 1992, and to that year’s ‘We Shall Be Free,’ you pretty much already know this song. And while ‘People’ is less of a sermon, it is also more naive and borderline mawkish as the chorus concludes there “Ain’t no quick fix at the end of a needle / It’s just people loving people.” Ain’t no quick fix, period. Calling out what ails the world by itself isn’t all that useful, if you don’t also offer some solutions. Preferably something a little more substantial than “let’s all be friends.”
But a weaker lyric can be saved by a great performance and/or production, and this is where this song really falls down. I would not blame you if you assumed the radio station had mistakenly played an early version with a scratch vocal. It doesn’t help Brooks’ delivery any that the song is a little higher than where he is really comfortable, but seriously, there is no reason for a modern recording to sound like this. Most first-year Music Production students can deliver a better board mix.
With the unusual combined radio deal with both Clear Channel and Cumulus, this song is on track to debut several spots into the top 10 of next week’s Country Airplay Chart. But where is it going to go from there? On the one hand, one has to be glad he didn’t try to compete with the truck-driving, beer-swilling dudebros who currently own country radio, on the other, this is probably not the Garth most people have been missing.
A bright spot: some of the cuts on the new album are made of much stronger stuff, so if this ’90s throwback arrangement isn’t repeated, let’s just assume this is the collection’s weakling and get back to looking forward to the album, due out November 28.
Listen to ‘People Loving People’ below.
Liv Carter
She holds several certificates from Berklee College of Music, and a certificate in Positive Psychology from UC Berkeley.
Her main influences are coffee, cats, and Alexander Hamilton.
Latest posts by Liv Carter (see all)
- Well yes, racism, but it’s more complicated - February 13, 2017
- Black River Entertainment had a great reason to party! - October 25, 2016
- Keith Urban returns to the States for US arena leg of his “ripCORD WORLD TOUR 2016” - October 10, 2016
