Ashley Gearing – “Out the Window”

Songwriters: Marv Green, Chris Lindsey, Hillary Lindsey, Aimee Mayo

This song should form one half of a teaching case in the difference between good and mediocre mainstream country. Ashley Gearing’s second charting single (and her first for Curb Records) sounds familiar. Indeed, Sara Evans had a smash with the same kind of song in 2004: young girl meets boy, runs off and lives happily ever after while her family is left wondering what happened. It’s a clever idea, and the fact that it doesn’t sound as good the second time around has more to do with poor execution than redundancy.

First, songwriting. “Suds in the Bucket” smartly centered on a single image, a girl who left so fast and spontaneously that she “left the suds in the bucket and the clothes hanging out on the line,” and that choice made for an endearing hook. Conversely, Green, Lindsey, Lindsey and Mayo recolor their lyric: first the girl is climbing out of the window to meet her lover, then tossing a bouquet out of the window on their wedding day, and finally gazing out the kitchen window at her children playing in the yard. The result is a hook that, well, sounds like a hook, and as a listener I don’t like to feel as though I’m being manipulated.

Moreover, the writers simply leave too little to the imagination here. In “Suds and the Bucket,” Billy Montana and Tammy Wagoner gave us great, memorable images of a church congregation sitting with mouths agape at the runaway, while the best that these writers can offer are heavy-handed lines like “five years later they were happy ever after making babies.”

Gearing’s performance is technically unimpeachable but regrettably unremarkable. Perhaps it’s unfair to expect a 16 year old to infuse a song with the kind of effervescence and personality that characterizes Evans’ “Suds,” but Gearing nonetheless misses any chance she had to improve the song by her performance. Ashley has a strong voice that is easy to listen to but hard to remember, but it may well improve as she matures. However, she makes this mediocre song listenable enough that it earns a very qualified thumbs up.

Listen: Ashley Gearing – “Out the Window”