“Written by committee” is a standard put-down for jumbled songs so chock-full of cliches without any sort of concentrated focus that it’s easy to imagine a room full of songwriters throwing proverbial darts at a lyrical dartboard in search of easily digestible, commercially viable hits. Like any stereotype, however, this particular brand of song creation doesn’t have to produce such sallow results.

Nashville veteran James House’s new single “I Love You Man” was written by a committee of four, and what a committee it was: Together, Don Cook (”You’re Gonna Miss Me”), House (”Broken Wing”), Curley Putnam (”He Stopped Loving Her Today”) and Rafe Von Hoy (”Golden Ring”) effectively bang out one thoroughly enjoyable rockabilly ditty.

If “I Love You Man,” written by the songwriting heavyweights during a string of summer songwriting sessions held earlier this year, sounds a little bit like a Dwight Yoakam tune, there’s good reason: House was also behind Yoakam’s 1993 Grammy-winning hit “Ain’t That Lonely Yet.” Similarly, this song represents a man satisfied with his newly single status, albeit in a slightly more upbeat, “mano-a-mano” manner: “I love you man/For taking her off my hands/I think one day you’ll understand/Why I’m you’re biggest fan.”

House also borrows Yoakam’s enthusiastic brand of retro honky-tonk rock that works well with his twang that bangs out lyrics like “I hear her calling, so I’ll let you go/I got a bar stool and it’s getting cold/Hey if she ever lets you off that leash/Come on down, the drink’s on me.” The song’s title also works well as an appropriately slurrable declaration that feels like a fresh addition to the crowded “good riddance” song market.

Despite his success with a pen (the songwriter also counts Diamond Rio’s “In a Week or Two,” which reached number two on the country charts, as one of his own), House’s own success as a singer has been limited to two Top 25 singles. And while it’s unlikely this song’s tongue-in-cheek, shake-your-hips vibe will make that garner him a three-peat, “I Love You Man” should make a more than sizable dent on the Americana charts.

Listen: James House – “I Love You Man”

One of country music’s greatest strengths is its realism. All the joys, sorrows and experiences of life are presented right there, on country radio, in a manner to which everyone can relate. For example, everyone I know who’s from a small, backwoods hick town constantly waxes poetic about general stores and church on Sunday. Women are free to vandalize their ex’s cars (or their ex) without consequence. And if I had a dollar for every time some old man I met in a bar left me his fortune, I could leave a fortune to some stranger I met at a bar.

A couple of similarly realistic scenarios are played out in “Hard Rain” by Lofton Creek artist Gwen Sebastian, but the happy endings are non-existent. When compared to other sad songs from recent memory, this one takes a little different approach–instead of being a dreary balled, it’s a sprightly uptempo tune that favors the fiddle over a whole string section. Instead of draping on the maudlin sentiment, the song deals frankly with its characters, the choices they made and the consequences therein. As the song goes, hearts break, and a hard rain washes out a gravel road. The singer who leaves his love behind to seek his fortune and the girl who gives up her baby aren’t portrayed as bad people, nor do they have a tacked-on redemption. They just made their decisions and are left to deal with the repercussions, months or years down the road. Anyone who’s ventured out into the real world has been there.

Sebastian has a radio-friendly voice, yet there’s just enough of an edge to it to give it some character and separate herself from other singers making a play for airtime. Though she’s working from a disadvantage of being on a record label (Lofton Creek) that has yet to compile more than a handful of success, she’s got a smartly written song and solid vocals. That’s not a guarantee of a smash hit, but it’s a good start.

Listen: Gwen Sebastian – “Hard Rain”

Exactly one year ago, Lee Ann Womack released a collection of whiskey-and-heartbreak laced neo-traditional country music that included songs about bars, dying relationships and domestic abuse. That collection, titled Call Me Crazy, was masterfully sung, beautifully recorded, splendidly arranged, wonderfully written, and, of course, a complete commercial failure.

Maybe a major label country artist who chooses to record and release an album comprised of mostly down-beat (mostly traditional) country music deserves to be called crazy. It was, after all, a miracle that “Last Call” managed to wiggle its way to hit status (thanks for that hook, Johnnie Walker Red), and there was scant hope for anything else from the disc to find a home alongside Jimmy Wayne and Billy Currington.

Fortunately, Nashville is a town where a songwriter is always waiting in the wings with a musical Prozac, and Womack’s new single (from an as-yet undefined project) is proof positive that the medicine works; Womack’s syrupy delivery is more than a few personalities removed from the sultry and smoky vocals on Call Me Crazy, with her rendering of this song’s idyllic world layered in pastel rather than neon.

In fact, if “There Is A God” was any more warm and fuzzy, it would be a bunny. A big, fat Easter Bunny with a basket full of clichés instead of candy.

“There Is A God” amounts to a slideshow of inspirational lifescapes—from running horses to flocking birds to sprouting seeds—all of which are offered as proof that “there is a God.” Of course, there are some fireflies, some babies and some abating cancer thrown into to mix…what inspirational country song would be complete without that trifecta?

Country music has a long history of incorporating Christian and gospel themes into both its mainstream and its ancillary branches, and even some of the genre’s most hardened outlaws have turned their musical eyes towards heaven. Here, however, Womack offers what is less a profession or discussion of faith and more a rejection of reason and logic. After going through a laundry-list of beautiful things (like a raindrop falling onto your tongue), the songs asks, “how much proof do you need,” eventually winding into the bridge and, thus, the pervading theme that binds all of these disjointed lyrics together: “Science says it’s all just circumstance/Like this whole world’s just an accident/If you wanna shoot that theory down/Just look around.”

While the overriding message of the song is that we can see God’s existence in everything around us, the writing errs when it ventures into a debate about the merits of logic and science (and the relation of those things to spirituality). The proclamation that “there is a God” does not need to also undermine and misrepresent what are almost universally accepted explanations for various scientific processes, and the fact that the song is willing to attack science makes the lyric come off as more political than it needs to.

After all, there’s a pretty famous song that makes essentially the same points without going down that road:

Everytime I hear a new born baby cry,
Or touch a leaf, or see the sky
Then I know why I believe

That song, “I Believe,” is a personal, specific declaration of faith. “There Is A God” is a pandering declaration of ideology masquerading as abstract inspirationalism–and a disappointing entry from a woman who has produced some of the most compelling country music of her generation.

Listen: Lee Ann Womack – “There Is A God”

Before his life was cut short by cancer at age 44, Wayman Tisdale had made a name for himself in two pretty diverse fields: professional basketball and jazz. He’d also been a long-time friend of Toby Keith, who sang a song on Tisdale’s last album and wrote this song days after Tisdale’s death this past May.

Several of Tisdale’s friends and band mates are on the record, most notably Dave Koz on the saxophone. Appropriately enough, the song has a smooth jazz-meets-Nashville feel, though the sax tips the scales into easy listening. The real existential question this song presents is, “Can you write a song that’s too depressing even for country music?”

I realize that we’re talking about country music here, which has a long tradition of heartbreak, misery and sad times. There have been plenty of superlative songs about the death of a loved one–Vince Gill’s “Go Rest High On That Mountain” and Guy Clark’s “The Randall Knife,” to name a couple. Those songs take on death and loss frankly, but they have a cathartic moment, and the singer by the end has moved on to acceptance.

With “Cryin’ For Me,” we’re still solidly in the grief stage. The first thing we hear is Tisdale’s outgoing voice mail message, so the song starts off on a somber, slightly morbid note and ends with Keith still crying for himself over losing a cherished friend.

I like the personal touches in the song, where Keith mentions Tisdale’s left-handed bass playing and refers to him as “Superstar.” Maybe if the song were more about those personal touches and less about Keith crying for himself, it wouldn’t seem as dreary. Yes, Tisdale has only been gone for a few months, so the hurt is still understandably fresh. But right now, there are two songs about suicide being played on the radio, and neither of them are as depressing as this one.

Listen: Toby Keith – “Cryin’ For Me (Wayman’s Song)”

Nobody was more excited than Bucky Covington when Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger showed up as a co-writer on the lead single to what will likely be Tim McGraw’s last album for Curb Records. “Nickelback is country, Nickelback is country!” Covington shouted as he dashed out into the streets, embracing strangers and swinging toddlers playfully around by the arms. One of his longest-held dreams had finally become reality.

Or at least that’s the impression you get from listening to the mustachioed American Idol alum’s nominally countrified cover of “Gotta Be Somebody,” a big rock hit for the critically-challenged Canadian quartet last year.

The fact that Nickelback isn’t country (sorry, Bucky) doesn’t rule out the possibility of a successful country version of “Gotta Be Somebody.” In fact, Kroeger’s writing actually lends itself fairly well to the format, as demonstrated by the convincing country barn-burner quality of “It’s a Business Doing Pleasure With You” and his own band’s good-humored “Rockstar,” which sounds like an uptown cousin to Paisley’s “Celebrity.” Combine those past works with the fact that Kroeger owns 604 Records, home to successful Canadian country acts Jessie Farrell, Aaron Pritchett, and George Canyon, and his country cred might actually be on firmer ground than southern rocker Covington’s.

Especially after you hear what Covington’s ham-fisted interpretive sense did to this song. And what someone did to his voice, assuming it wasn’t Bucky’s desire to sound like a robot with a dying power supply. Combined with the repetitive, looped quality of the melody and general loudness issues, the overprocessed vocal works against the very human essence of the lyrics. The words are all about emotional longing, but everything else sounds like the result of buttons pushed on a machine. Where’s the soul?

At the same time, it’s hard not to be a little impressed: Covington’s team has pulled off the improbable feat of sanding all the rough edges off of Nickelback–improbable because, really, who knew there were any to begin with? Alas, Kroeger’s performance sounds positively raw by comparison. You show ‘em, Bucky.

Listen: Bucky Covington – “Gotta Be Somebody”

As Roni Stoneman says, “When you’re hot, you’re hot. When you’re not, you can’t give it away.” Sad but true, and, unfortunately, that’s likely to be the fate of Buddy Jewell’s new single “Somebody Who Would Die For You.” Jewell is now 48 years old and hardly and example of the handsome hunks that Nashville favors promoting and country radio typically allots airtime to.

Jewell came to success with “”Help Pour out the Rain (Lacey’s Song)” on the heels of winning the first USA Network Nashville Star competition in 2003. That song and its follow up “Sweet Southern Comfort” both reached #3, but after that there were no more significant hits for the former professional demo singer, causing his label, Columbia, to drop him at the end of 2005.

After a lengthy hiatus, Jewell self-released “This Ain’t Mexico” in 2008, a song which saw no chart action.

In a perfect world, “Somebody Who Would Die For You” would restore Jewell to the top of the charts. The single breaks no new ground, but it is a well crafted and well produced country song that, thematically, reminds of the recent Tracy Lawrence hit “Find Out Who Your Friends Are.” (Lawrence also recorded “Somebody Who Would Die For You” on his 2009 gospel album The Rock.)

Rock guitars are kept to a minimum here, with effective use of steel guitar and Jewell’s totally controlled vocal prominent throughout. The lyrics depict a number of scenes best described as random slices of life, but which taken as a whole they tell an effective and moving story–one that can be interpreted on both secular and religious planes. Add to that a catchy chorus, and you have a single that deserves to be a hit.

Listen: Buddy Jewell – “Somebody Who Would Die For You”

There are umpteen “road” songs out there, but few are told from the road’s point of view. After all, what’s a slab of asphalt got to say? Turns out the road is full of tough love, telling its travelers “I offer many choices and places you can go/But you must choose/I’m just the road.”

This anthropomorphization comes to you courtesy of Aaron Watson on the lead single from his upcoming 2010 album. Never heard of Aaron Watson? Better start getting used to the name: you might be hearing it for some time. The Texan, who’s experienced quite a bit of regional success and is slowly building a national fanbase, seems poised become the next “overnight” star after spending the past decade in the honky tonk trenches making a name for himself.

The road, a metaphor for life’s long journey, isn’t always a smooth one. As Watson sings, it’s “paved with memories, glory and regrets…lined with broken dreams and cigarettes.” When you die, the road’ll be there to lead you to your final destination. And if that destination happens to be a lifetime stay at Lucifer’s B&B? Well, that ain’t the road’s fault, sinner; chances are you made your fair share of wrong turns along the way.

An infectious chorus and an arrangement that purrs like a fine-tuned engine make “The Road” a great candidate for a driver’s seat singalong, should you for some reason feel like replacing Watson’s Texas twang with your own voice. Religious without being preachy, possessing enough fiddle and pedal steel to please the purists and catchy enough to capture the attention of non-traditionalists, “The Road” can appeal to a wide swath of listeners. Longtime fans of Watson will almost certainly appreciate it, and newcomers might just see what all the fuss is about.

Listen: Aaron Watson – “The Road”

The popular thematic contrast of “heaven and hell” has long been a way for songwriters to tie together the dichotomy of human life into one nicely alliterative phrase: While “heaven” covers small country churches, family time and blissful courtships, “hell” represents the bars, whiskey, heartbreak and regret that sometimes stem from imbalances in important relationships.

It is also an apt way to describe Trent Tomlinson’s latest single “Angels Like Her,” which massages that idea into a heavenly little slice of a song with one hell of an opening lyric: “The sunbeam hit the Jim Beam and ricocheted off a bottle of Coke/Cut through the still smoldering second-hand night-before smoke/The whisky’s half-empty, half in me, my enemy and my friend/Well, last night drowned my sorrows, but today is tomorrow again.”

That verse sets a well-crafted tone for the rest of the song and showcases Tomlinson’s proven knack for turning a phrase. By articulating the scene of the morning-after crime through details of the tastes, smells, sounds and feelings of coming down off of a one-night stand, the listener might as well be sitting on his couch with him, nursing a double whammy of a hangover and heartache.

Although it’s the second single off Tomlinson’s upcoming sophomore album A Guy Like Me after “Henry Cartwright’s Produce Stand” failed to stick, the song originally appeared on his debut album Country Is My Rock.

Luckily, “Angel Like Her’s” production complements the tune by largely staying out of its lyrics’ way, with strains of the steel guitar echoing the regret of the song’s protagonist in a way that only a steel guitar can. The song, co-written by the singer with the help of Aaron Baker and Arlos Smith, has Mark Chesnutt written all over it, but Tomlinson’s voice serves up lines like ”Yeah, she came straight from Heaven/But I know the devil did too” with enough honky-tonk matter-of-factness to be believable.

At times, “Angels Like Her” becomes a bit plodding and heavy-handed, and its chorus can’t quite compete with the beauty of its verses. However, it’s nice to see Tomlinson’s mix of neo-traditional and outlaw styles on display in one of the best-written songs to hit mainstream country music in recent memory.

Listen: Trent Tomlinson – “Angels Like Her”

Somewhere, someplace, ex-Lonestar frontman Richie McDonald is banging his head against a wall in perfect rhythm with Rodney Atkins’ latest single “Chasin’ Girls.”

As one of the early pioneers of a the modern family-focused sub-genre of country music sometimes affectionately referred to as “sippy cup country,” McDonald is probably wishing he could have patented songs like “My Front Porch Looking In” and “Mr. Mom” before his group disbanded, his career went south and a less-capable singer completely cornered the market.

Atkins–a likeable enough guy with a talent for pairing catchy songs with a regular-guy delivery–releases the tune on the heels of the promising honky-tonk romp “15 Minutes.” However, he returns to the formulaic Daddy and Me shtick that has commercially served him well on songs “Watching You” and “Cleaning This Gun (Come On In Boy).” Combine that sound with the feel-good imagery and gee-whiz attitude of his most recent number one song “It’s America,” and the end result is “Chasin’ Girls.”

Where “It’s America” failed, however, this tune at least partially succeeds: Instead of mindlessly stringing together generically patriotic symbols of our country, it does tell a story by applying its titular action to dating, marriage and children in a progressive way that is engaging, if not entirely predictable.

Such attention to familial bliss could organically be expected from Atkins as an artist, since the singer survived a rough childhood illness and messy adoption process. Still, that back story doesn’t support the song’s choppy, paint-by-numbers lyrics pulled seemingly straight from a Fun with Dick and Jane book–if Dick and Jane were hormonally charged teenagers with a penchant for Sonic drive-ins and bad grammar, that is: ”We’d say ‘Here comes Ally with her hot friends/They got water balloons in their hands/Aw man they got me/Now let’s get them.’”

The fun, of course, doesn’t stop there. Between gems like “Chasin’ girls/What a life/Man I love them/Can’t get enough of them/From their toes up to their curls” and “Chasin’ girls/Hard to catch/Sweet to hold/Even tougher to let them go,” the very chorus meant to tie together all the different scenarios in which a man may end up chasing girls ends up completely unraveling underneath overly energetic layers of production that sound like they’ve been doused in RedBull.

It’s never good when Atkins’ reliably weak vocal performances—just try to get through the chorus’ “whole wide world” gymnastics without outwardly cringing—is the least of this song’s problems. Given his track record with similarly themed songs, however, I may just have to join old McDonald in exacting some head-banging, self-inflicted pain of my own when “Chasin’ Girls” inevitably climbs the charts.

Listen: Rodney Atkins – “Chasin’ Girls”

“Work Hard, Play Harder” first gained attention last summer when used in commercials for cop drama Saving Grace. The Black Crowes promptly sued, stating that Wilson stole from “Jealous Again.” Whether this is true or not, it’s apparently all been worked out. Too bad the song didn’t get any better in the interim.

Everything you need to know about “Work Hard” is in its title; the rest can be inferred by anyone with the barest knowledge of Wilson’s body of music. But just in case you should somehow forget who the artist is, she helpfully provides some hints, singing “I’m a good-timin’ American daughter/Redneck, blue collar/And I’ll party down to my last dollar,” praising her “rough and rowdy friends,” and eschewing manicured nails.

Yes, it is catchy, and it’s far from horrible, but we’ve heard this song from Gretchen Wilson before. It feels like an attempt to recapture the wild success of similarly themed anthems “Here for the Party,” “All Jacked Up,” and “Redneck Woman,” only it doesn’t quite measure up to its predecessors.

It’s nice to hear a mainstream female country singer who isn’t part of the Carrie vs. Taylor war, but at the same time, the failure of her past two singles also raises an important question: has country radio moved on to, as Vince Gill sang it, “the next big thing?” Has the listening public grown tired of Gretchen Wilson’s brand of rowdy party music?

Maybe it’s worn out its welcome a bit, but “Redneck Woman” is a good song. Wilson can also sing a fine ballad, as she proved with “When I Think About Cheating” and “I Don’t Feel Like Loving You Today.” Continuing to peddle “good enough” but otherwise unmemorable filler like this is doing her talent a disservice, especially when Wilson’s made it clear that she can do better.

Listen: Gretchen Wilson – “Work Hard, Play Harder”