Gretchen Wilson - “You Don’t Have To Go Home”

I listen to her “Here For the Party” album every now and then, and I wonder how someone could make a record like that and still stray from quality more and more with each album released after it.

If Gretchen ever wants to be anything close to what she was in 2004-2005, she’s got to take a long hiatus IMO. She’s going to have to get people wondering what she’s been doing, and where she’s been… and once she returns, maybe people (and radio) will care and start picking up her records again.

I like Gretchen a lot, but her last album was such a disappointment. I hope she isn’t totally done, though.

I think the song and album is one of the best. I think you need another job b/c you can’t tell good music when you hear it. Gretchen is AWESOME!!!

I’ll take the middle ground on this

This album is okay - it has some good tracks and some lesser tracks but doesn’t reach the heights of HERE FOR THE PARTY. I suppose that should be expected since her debut album defined her personna.

This album is one that grows on you with repeated listening. I’d give it 3.5 stars - I’d give it 4 stars but I regard “Painkiller” as a huge mistake and feel that she could have done better by “Heaven Help Me”.

I do feel that she has almost exhausted this vein of music and will need to diversify her approach in future albums in order to remain interesting, particularly in light of her obvious vocal limitations. Her next album will need to be outstanding or, like many others, she will fall by the wayside, having had a short, but very productive run

I think the problem is that country radio is not originally country anymore. It is a bunch of “pop” want to be stars. Like Rascal Flatts, Carrie Underwood, Kenny Chesney, and all those over rated people. Whatever happened to people like Gretchen, Sara Evans, Brooks and Dunn, and people who knew what country was.

Maybe you’re problem is that you have been with Carrie (cuz she’s easy) and Gretchen wouldn’t give you the tim of day!!!

I think if these so called music reviewers would really listen to Gretchen’s latest CD …One of the boys, they would see an incredible sign of growth, both vocally and as a song writer. She has taken us on a journey through the last couple years, which at times hasn’t been pretty and hasn’t been an emotional high, but once again in my opinion has delivered an awesome mix of songs, some to make us smile, some to make us cry and some just to toss back a few and forget about our troubles. Personally my favorite is “Pain Killer”, you can’t get anymore country then that song! So Mr Jim, I suggest you take another listen, and listen without bias or what you think should be classified as real country, because as far as singers today, Gretchen Wilson is the only one right now putting out real country music!

I’d like to make a couple of points in response.

1) If we were to go back and look at the charts from the last three or four years, I think we’d find that there has been a considerable up-tick in the amount of “traditional” sounding songs that are being recorded and released (when compared to the five, six, or seven years prior).

2) That said, I think the entire argument that Gretchen isn’t getting played on country radio because she’s “too country” is a major league cop-out. Again, if we look back at the charts, I think we’ll find that country radio is starving for “traditional” sounding songs.

But an artist like Sunny Sweeney sits far outside the mold of the “traditional” sound. Those artists are trying to sound “traditional,” and the result is a record that is jarring.

I wonder if the argument that contemporary pop-country has destroyed the “traditional” artists is based more on passion than it is on fact. Country music has been changing for the last 60 years (more, really), and it will continue to change. Was the country music of the 1980s really any less pop than today’s country music? Of course not.

But it’s easy to blame Shania, Faith, and Rascal Flatts.

3) Bottom line: Gretchen Wilson is not getting played on country radio because her recent releases have been very weak.

“You Don’t Have To Go Home” has zero redeeming qualities. It doesn’t have a story, it doesn’t have a hook, you can’t dance to it, and Gretchen doesn’t sing it well. That makes it a bad song, as far as I’m concerned. and it doesn’t matter if you’re Merle Haggard or Mickey Gilley or Randy Travis, or Rascal Flatts–if you send bad songs to radio, most of the time radio will not play them.

And when I review music, I don’t care if people call you pop-country, traditional, bluegrass, etc. I am a big-tent guy…I believe there’s room for all kinds of country music. But I have no patience–no patience–for any kind of bad country music.

Any person is, of course, free to disagree with my application of the term “bad”.

obviously you havent been to a Gretchen wilson concert.People dance in their seats and sing along to her songs. Its her record label that doesnt promote her music.If she got a new record label she would zoom to the top and then you would have to eat your words.She is one awesome singer and performer and no one is gonna change that.I agree you need to get a new job and leave this job to the people that know what they are talking about.

Having been on the receiving end of many such demands, I’m always struck by the cavalier way in which some readers will insist that a critic be fired for a review with which he or she disagrees. Do I go to their workplace and complain to the manager about the way they prepare the fries?

I didn’t say anything when this was first posted but I have gone back and listened to Wilson’s “You Don’t Have To To Home” several times. My opinion hasn’t changed or even mellowed. It’s not good music. It’s the kind of filler we get on albums all the time. It’s a waste of time and money.