Single Review: ‘Fill In The Blank’ – Greg Bates
11 years ago Liv Carter Comments Off on Single Review: ‘Fill In The Blank’ – Greg Bates
Songwriters: Greg Bates, Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne
Coming in on the tails of his first single, ‘I Did It For The Girl,’ Greg Bates’ latest, ‘Fill In The Blank,’ unfortunately misses the mark.
‘Fill In The Blank,’ is a song that tries to be clever and naughty in a somewhat sly kind of way, but it doesn’t go far enough. Craig Campbell’s ‘Fish’ at least had you holding on because, even though you knew they weren’t really going to say it, they set it up, and the writing was clever enough that if you didn’t know the title of the song, you’d be completely surprised when he sang the word “fish” instead of, well, you know, that other four-letter word that starts with ‘f.’
The influence of Brad Paisley looms large over this one. It almost sounds like something he would have cut earlier in his career, except that Paisley himself would have pushed the envelope a bit further from a writing perspective, or simply found a better hook that didn’t require that kind of heavy lifting. The production and even Bates’ vocals sound like they were doing a song designed to be pitched to Paisley.
Bates’ vocal delivery falls flat too. Rather than sing it in a fun and campy sort of way, Bates sounds like he’s reading a prepared speech with little in the way of emotional content. His pitch is fine and his vocal quality sounds pretty good, but there’s no emotion to back it up, and a song like this one really needs that extra oomph to really sell it. Imagine Keith Urban singing ‘You Look Good In My Shirt’ without the playfully lecherous vocal delivery, and you get a sense of how important that is to a song with this kind of content.
In all, it’s not a terribly clever idea for a song, and the fact that the interpretation of it isn’t anything we haven’t heard done better before doesn’t help its case. Either way, I haven’t been terribly impressed with Bates thus far, and this one doesn’t change my mind about him.
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.
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