Music Review #3- Flower Shops by ERNEST (feat. Morgan Wallen)
The new single from ERNEST; a rising star in country!
It’s Tuesday so that means back to another review! I am very excited this week to actually have something new to review, as my previous two were just older albums I had enjoyed. This will also be the first single review as opposed to the album reviews.
I was super excited to get to review a new release, so I waited until I was ready to write this to give it a listen.
I am a very lyrical-based guy, that’s always the first thing that’s gonna hit me in a song, and man, these don’t disappoint. On my first listen I didn’t really get it, but the more I listen, the more I catch the cleverness of some of these lines! It was written by Ben Burgess, ERNEST, and Mark Holman, and they knocked it out of the park. I’m going to put a couple of my favorite lines here:
“There’s tears in her blue, and bloodshot in mine. This bender’s been bending, it’s hell-bound to break”
“And I took up drinkin’ since she took the time, to tell me I took the best years of her life”
Just very clever wordplay all the way through. I was not expecting such great lyricism in this. The whole premise of the song is clever, and honestly pretty fresh for country. I can’t really recall off the top of my head a song that so readily admits the flaws of the person talking, in this way.
It seems the person has drug and alcohol issues and it’s affecting his relationship and the girl he loves. He knows he’s messing up, and knows he’s “crazy” and knows it won’t take just one flower to get her back. I think there’s also an underlying theme of addiction in the fact that in the song he never mentions quitting his vices to get her back. He just wants to buy flowers to beg her forgiveness for his addictions instead of just stopping the drinking/drugs.
The lyrics are great, but the production is nothing to be slept on either.
Wallen’s voice compliments ERNEST’s so well in this song. They both have that deep raspy feel, but can use it to deliver some softer lines as well. Wallen’s signature rasp is a bit heavier than that of ERNEST, and so it gives the right amount of variance to easily tell who is singing. When they join and deliver a duet line they compliment well, and still remain just the right amount of different.
The instrumental arrangement is gorgeous as well. It’s led by an acoustic guitar and some lovely mourning steel guitar. The first chorus kicks the song up into a drum beat and the steel really heats up. It bounces perfectly around each ear. The mood fits the lyrics perfectly, with a sad, 90s-esque country western feel. I could easily see this instrumental over a George Strait or Alan Jackson ballad.
Overall I really love this song. I had no real expectations going in, as ERNEST wasn’t really on my radar, but man I’ll definitely be checking some of his other stuff out and looking forward to new releases from the man. It was nice to see Wallen return to classic country after the release of “Broadway Girls” with Lil Durk. I liked “Broadway Girls” but as I said, just nice to hear him using that gravelly voice on a more typical country song.
Rating this one is a bit tough, but I think I’m gonna say: 7.7/10
I don’t love getting away from .5s but 7.5 felt a bit too low and 8 felt too high so I landed at a middle ground.
As always, go give it a listen and tell me what you think in the comments! Thanks for reading and see you for another review next week!
