'Cole Swindell'

After an early career spent writing songs for country moguls like Craig Campbell and Luke Bryan, the Georgia-born Cole Swindell has released his debut album, which is about as forgettable as albums come.

When did country lose its imagination?

Swindell, while providing no answers on his self-titled album, presents an overwhelming amount of evidence that country has completely lost its touch. It lacks the validity old stars like Garth Brooks and Kenny Rogers fought hard to give country, and contemporary stars like Trace Adkins and Kenny Chesney have fought to keep.

Take the album’s debut single “Chillin’ It.” The track recently exploded to the top of the Billboard Country Charts. The music video, viewed more than two million times, features Swindell wearing top down aviators and preying on a sandy-colored soubrette after she gives him awkward sex eyes.

“Nothing but two lane country on up ahead,” he sings, “Girl, you so fine, I wouldn’t mind if this is all we did.”

Really? You so fine? Swindell could have afforded to stick in the verb, if only to not sound like such a frat star.

It’s not like he didn’t have room in the song — it’s packed with enough beer and buds references to advertise the Super Bowl.

The problem isn’t that the song is necessarily bad, but that the entire album plays like endless repetition.

Throughout the twelve tracks, there are approximately 11 references or choruses about boozing, seven references to trucks — Swindell drives a shiny new K5 Blazer and likes to brag about it — and more than 18 references to girls that either have broken hearts or are fixing to break hearts.

Of course, these are the motifs one works with when one writes a country song, but they used to represent something more than just an overly generalized nostalgia.
Incapable of narrative, Swindell puts all the tropes into a blender and pumps out tracks that ooze sentimentality like beer can condensation.

“I got a dozen roses if she comes back home,” he pines in “Dozen Roses & Six Pack,” “And this six pack might not be enough/ but it’s a damn good start if we’re ending us.”

Oh, please.  

Coupled with a voice so lacking in character that it sounds air-brushed and auto-tuned, the entire effect is one of formulaic repetitiousness. You can listen to the entire album and not recall a single lyric afterward.

This is not just formulaic. It’s a sad consent to mediocrity.