A Lot About Livin' - Alan Jackson (1992)

I have a pretty specific memory of the last summer I worked at Econo Foods, my high school gig. I was old enough to spend a lot of it driving the beat up old cargo van to do floral and catering deliveries. The vehicle was an unpleasant beast to handle, and only had scratchy AM radio for accompaniment. AM radio in the 90s midwest meant Twins baseball, farm commodity prices, Paul Harvey, or country music. So I listened to a lot of country music that summer, and Alan Jackson was A-list at the time.

Jackson has a great voice and a great ear for a classic country sound, even when the technology behind it is much more modern.

A few of the tracks here are the kind of boilerplate country songs that make people treat country as a joke sometimes. Lyrics based on puns or bash-you-over-the-head-obvious metaphors for heartbreak (Who says you can’t have it all, you see… he’s talking about all the bad stuff, not all the good stuff as you might expect. Tropical Depression: see, it’s a weather pattern but it’s also an actual bout of depression he’s having while on a beach). One of my least favorite things is a song where I can tell from the title and first three lines exactly what the content of the whole song will be.

But there are also some great autobiographical moments, and some genuine insight about love and growing up.

The music is generally neo-traditionalist country, with a bit of western swing and some outlaw-style electric guitar thrown in for good measure.

Tracks I Liked

Chattahoochee - one of those great songs about growing up. A true classic.

She’s Got The Rhythm (and I’ve got the blues) - ok we’re pretty close to trite pun-based country songwriting here, but it’s a fantastic singalong-worthy tune.

Mercury Blues - Don’t know if it was ever used to sell Mercury cars, but it was somewhat weirdly used to sell Ford F-150s