CD Review – ‘Need You Now’ – Lady Antebellum

14 years ago Liv Carter 1

‘Need You Now’ – Lady Antebellum (Capitol Nashville, 2010)

When Lady Antebellum burst onto the scene just over 2 years ago, sounding fresh and new, many wondered how long it would last. The fact that the trio released their sophomore album just days before picking up their first Grammy Award shows that the doubters have been well and truly left in the dust. ‘Need You Now’ is already two hit singles strong and there is plenty of material here to keep the trio in the charts for the next two years. 
Nothing on this album pushes into new territory; guitar-heavy arrangements, vocal harmonies, and lyrics about love and life. It’s got cute toe-tappers (Something ’bout a Woman’), ballads of love found and lost (‘When You Got a Good Thing’ and ‘If I Knew Then’ respectively), and the best of today’s pop-country in ‘American Honey’.
One of my stand-out tracks is ‘Perfect Day’. Its live-in-the-now message isn’t the usual unrealistic directive about how you shouldn’t care about tomorrow. Instead, the song realizes that those special days we wish would last forever are so special exactly because we know they have to end.
The “yeah yeah yeah” and “hey hey!” of ‘Stars Tonight’ is totally insubstantial but it will get the place dancing during live shows. And this is a little bit of the problem with this CD – it feels like an album with an agenda; that of fitting the current market as much as possible with an eye to achieve as much chart success as possible. While a good effort, I suspect this trio is far more talented than they are allowed to show here. 
Most songs lack a bit of bite; there are no rough edges here. Everything is polished down, presumably so as to not diminish the pop market cross-over appeal. For some tracks, this isn’t a problem. ‘Need You Now’ is unashamedly a pop song, but  a good pop song is still good. But when ‘Our Kind of Love’ starts with a confident “here we go!” you expect something a little more powerful than what follows. 
The heart of this CD is Hillary’s vocal performance. She interprests the lyrics beautifully and translates all the emotions with real feeling. This makes the difference with Charles much more noticable than on their debut. I like his voice very much but he is more limited and when he tries to Emote, it sometimes goes wrong. Case in point is ‘Hello World’. The whole song just tries too hard to pull at the heart strings and ends up sounding all Movie of the Week. Charles’ overacting is not helped by all the sugar dripping off the string section. 

It took me a while to get into this album, in sharp contrast with the debut CD which I loved from minute one. Hopefully by CD #3, Lady Antebellum, and more importantly their label, will feel comfortable enough to take some risks and not obsess with cross-over appeal as much.

‘Need You Now’ is a pop record with country influences rather than the other way around but it is nevertheless a solid piece of work which will go a long way in advancing this trio’s (hopefully very long) career.

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Liv Carter

Liv Carter

Liv is a career coach for creatives, and the people who work with them.
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.
Liv Carter

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