Megan Mullins – “Long Past Gone”

Songwriters: Marla Cannon-Goodman and Megan Mullins.

Her first single for Broken Bow sister label Stoney Creek, Megan Mullins’ “Long Past Gone” finds one of our most promising young voices stifled by the second rate material and stale, cheap production that is typical of so many indie label country releases.

Mullins’ sings with a sexy, swanky twang, but “Long Past Gone” suffers from a terrible lack of imagination, with a generic percussion track methodically prodding along beside a melody that provides its talented singer little room to breathe. In Stoney Creek’s quest to craft a record that sounds like everything else on radio, it has crafted a record that sounds like everything else on radio—except without the tightness of its major label counterparts. The mix isn’t quite as good and the playing has just a bit less character.

The end result is a record that sounds anonymous, despite its singer’s recognizable vocal color. Monotonous and boring, Mullins is asked to stretch herself little here as she sings a series of imageless lyrics. It’s hard to complain about her apt performance on this single, but it’s disappointing that she’s held back by circumstance. Give her with a bigger budget, better songs and top-notch studio geeks and there’s no telling how high she might soar.

So, to an extent, this release serves as an indictment of much of country’s indie community. While in other genres indies are trendsetters and creative risk-takers, labels like Broken Bow spend their time and money pointlessly chasing the tails of Nashville’s big cats. With today’s technology, budget does not have to be a determining factor when it comes to quality, but here the goal is seemingly to deliver a carbon copy of standard, formulaic major label fare. And even if an indie label is successful in reproducing the exact sound of a more expensive record, doing so is an exercise in futility, as the record in question can only ever hope to achieve a level of equality; a carbon copy will never surpass the quality of original.

What country’s indie labels must eventually learn is that their bread and butter exists somewhere slightly outside the mainstream. Stoney Creek is never going to earn Mugan Mullins any significant amount of radio airplay, and it makes little sense to build her a career as an artist who sounds like everyone else in a format that she has at best a long-shot chance of competing in, given her label’s resources.

Listen: Megan Mullins – “Long Past Gone”