Videos by American Songwriter
Blake Shelton
All About Tonight
Warner Bros. Nashville
[Rating: 2.5 stars]
Coming in at six songs and a lean 22:30 run-time, Blake Shelton’s All About Tonight is what I imagine being in the studio audience for an average sitcom would be like. There are those archetypal characters—the mean father-in-law, the sensitive cowboy—and perhaps a actually funny and heartfelt love story or two—fiancé Miranda Lambert guests on the standout track, “Draggin’ The River.” And yes, you’re aware that somebody worked very hard on these jokes, but still, every time you laugh, you feel like a little part of you just died, and it’s located in the left hemisphere of your brain. Don’t worry, though. There’s that recorded laugh track playing to cover it up, or in Shelton’s case, there’s those songs with all the basic country staples that get you on the radio, no questions asked—”All About Tonight” with its drinking and live-for-the-moment mentality, “That Thing We Do” with its discussion of hooking up in the back of a pick-up, and “Got A Little Country,” which tells us what we already knew—city girls love them some country boys.
