"These Days"
Spotify:
open.spotify.com/track/1Wl7KMkSivuQ5DX7vkYJzR?si=849849be5ba74e2d YouTube:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuzJA5tdoag 1
He doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.
I decided to play some new music. I've been reading this new novel and my eyes were starting to glaze over. I'm not sure I'll ever recommend it, because it's kinda dense with highfalutin' words, but a lot of it centers on Berlin club culture and I can relate to that. "Good Girl" is about a young woman of Afghan heritage who is troubled by her heritage and there's great insight into Muslim culture and on the surface even I didn't want to read it, but it's very intriguing.
But maybe it was the Sunday afternoon blues. I found myself checking out. So I decided to get my iPad and listen to some new music as I surfed the web. And first I listened to the new Wet Leg album, which is surprisingly good, and if it was the seventies I'd be a fan. Back then if you purchased an LP you played it enough to know it and like it but in today's hit and run world you don't listen that way anymore. But I played about half the album. I liked where it was coming from. They were thinking about this music before they made it, this is the punk ethos of the seventies, in this case the antithesis of the Spotify Top 50. But halfway through I decided I'd heard enough and...
I pulled up Spotify's Discover Weekly playlist, which can yield some gems, but is too often littered with old stuff I already know, and then I went to Release Radar and it stimulated some further listening. I heard that Bob Dylan duet with Barbra Streisand which made me research the album and see that she did a duet with James Taylor on "Secret o' Life," a genius song, but then I pulled up the duet and the worst part was Streisand herself, I was never a fan. She's the antithesis of what the rock revolution represented back in the late sixties and seventies.
And then I saw a duet with Buddy Guy and Joe Walsh, which I had to listen to. We're going back to the old days, where you make the album because you want a recorded document, which you issue into the ether, if you're banking on sales forget about it.
But Release Radar wasn't satisfying either, so I went to Amazon Music and couldn't find a playlist that resonated with me, so then I went to Qobuz and found this playlist entitled "New Releases":
open.qobuz.com/playlist/2049430 And what appealed to me was that this was a multi-genre playlist, I wanted a taste of everything, which I got, there are 105 cuts on it.
And the tracks weren't by the usual suspects, at least not those at the beginning, and some I listened to and some I skipped through after thirty seconds or so and then...
I'm catching up on "Bloomberg Businessweek" in Apple News+, I'm not concentrating on the music, but I hear something that stops me, stops my reading and makes me take a moment to listen, to then research.
The cut was "These Days" by Tanner Usrey.
2
"A heart like mine is a hard one to love
'Cause I've gotten real damn good at really f*cking things all up
Now I'm fighting demons in the dark
I don't know where I should start
Oh lord I'm spiraling again"
This is why country music is having a moment, YOU CAN RELATE TO IT!
The Spotify Top 50 has become a caricature of itself, it's TMZ music, made for the penumbra, gossip columns and brand endorsements more than the music itself, oftentimes bluster and braggadocio, little different from a Marvel movie. It's relatively narrow, and then I hear someone like Tanner Usrey and he's totally outside.
This is not what the newspapers are writing about. There are genius acts plying the boards far superior to the overhyped dancing nitwits. How do you find them? Let me tell you, I rarely check out these playlists so don't see this as a ringing endorsement of them.
"Oh and I've been sinking down
Try to scream but can't make a sound
Tell me is it all just in my head
And I've grown so numb to it all
Oh God here comes the fall"
This is in the vein of singer-songwriter acts of the early seventies. Then again, James Taylor could not only pick and create songs with changes he had a way with words, and studying those of Tanner Usrey I had to admit that they weren't quite in JT's league.
Does he have it in him? When someone reaches this age, seemingly around thirty, and has been in the game for over a decade, usually not. Then again, there are some producers who can push them into their interior and squeeze greatness out of them.
Then again, there are very few great ones out there.
But the magic of "These Days" is more than the downtrodden lyrics, there's Usrey's vocal...THIS AI cannot reproduce. This is the magic. It's got nothing to do with "The Voice," that's got nothing to do with art, this guy's voice is soulful in that you truly get the impression he's singing from the heart, that it's truly him. And it's sweet with just a bit of whiskey/rough and can sustain a song all by its lonesome, sans effects.
And speaking of no effects, the instrumentation makes magic. The subtle piano, never mind the acoustic guitar, and some organ notes...
"These Days" is in the vein of those Stephen Stills songs on those Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young albums, like "4+20." Nobody seems to be trying to replicate that formula, even too many of the vaunted Americana artists who are overwriting their songs for gravitas and don't have voices as magical s Usrey's.
3
Now further research tells me that Usrey had a song in "Yellowstone." And I know "Yellowstone" is a phenomenon, but middlebrow soap is not for me, I watched enough "Bonanza," where's that at, if you want me I'll be in the bar.
And it seems that the initial "Yellowstone" placement got him a deal with Atlantic. Turns out it's from the pre-Grainge hip-hop all the time chasing online momentum regime. It didn't make cognitive sense, but Usrey is on Atlantic.
And doing deep research I see that Sacks & Co. is involved, what a waste of money. It's no longer about hype, about print, it's about LISTENING! No amount of press is going to get me to check out Tanner Usrey, another Texan cowboy who is a product of the Red Dirt scene and likes Skynyrd and... Now, more than ever, you've got to hear it to get it, and it's nearly impossible to get someone to hear it. But if something is good, despite not flying on the mainstream radar, someone is listening, Usrey's got four tracks with double digit million streams on Spotify, and they're not from "Jellystone." How did everybody find out? What accounts for the 49,393,234 streams of "Come Back Down"? Damned if I know.
Maybe it's those endless gigs, multiple recordings... If you're good enough you gain traction, and if you don't either you're doing something wrong or you and your music just aren't good enough.
4
Then I decided to check out some more Usrey songs. First I started with the most popular on Spotify, but I figured it would be best to go to the new album, also called "These Days," which was released on Friday, that major label big money can oftentimes be heard in the recordings.
And the opening cut, "Do It to Myself"...was a rocker, nothing like "These Days." At first kind of pedestrian, not that memorable, but then I could lock into the "Smuggler's Blues" vibe, but still... This was not magical.
And then I wondered if "These Days" was an anomaly, whether it was really a rock record with only this one introspective track. So I started sampling songs and I came across "Better Weather," which was even more intimate than "These Days," I thought it was superior to "These Days," but then going back to the latter I decided it was not, but it's pretty damn good.
Let's be clear, I don't see either of these tracks burning up the chart, whatever chart that might be. This is not appropriate for the flashy too often mindless in your face country chart, and it's more mainstream than the Americana niche, this is the type of music with broad-based appeal, this guy is one step away from BLOWING UP!
I mean I checked out Reddit. People who'd seen him were testifying, and I got it. This was completely different from the production of today's arena show, in this case just the man (or woman) and his music is enough. You're sitting there and the sound sets your mind free, adrift, you're in your own movie, we call this life.
5
There is definitely something here. Neither of these tracks are going to make Tanner a household name, then again, who is these days? But he could build a career and become...
Zach Bryan?
Well, Usrey is less country. It's the difference between Oklahoma and Texas. Then again, Bryan sells out stadiums, instantly. Could Usrey do the same? All I'll say is these two songs will ignite the average punter more than anything Bryan's done.
All you've got to do is listen.
"Better Weather"
Spotify:
open.spotify.com/track/7xaSwspyKSD6gqX6l3UBhc?si=45870af084d24832 YouTube:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9izL6DbXDM--
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