Some artists are here to entertain, while others move an audience. Jason Isbell, for example, can bring one to their knees equipped only with an acoustic guitar. When Dolly Parton pleads in “Jolene,” her despair is palpable. The Zac Brown Band entertains. And if it makes you happy, Ms. Crow once sang, then it can’t be that bad.
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Short and sweet—“Loving You Easy” is a summer breeze love song blending Jimmy Buffett’s beach khakis with Brown’s nod to retro soul. It appears on Brown’s album of multiple music personalities called Jekyll + Hyde, released in 2015 on Big Machine Records. Fans were positively entertained as the album topped the Billboard 200 and Top Country Albums charts.
Beach Soul
Zac Brown wrote the song with country star writers Niko Moon and Al Anderson. Moon is a frequent collaborator with Brown, and has also written songs for Dierks Bentley, Rascal Flatts, and Morgan Wallen. Anderson is the former lead guitarist for Louisville’s NRBQ, and he’s written hits for Vince Gill, Trisha Yearwood, and Tim McGraw. He co-wrote McGraw’s No. 1 hit “The Cowboy in Me” with Jeffrey Steele and Craig Wiseman.
Brown described “Loving You Easy” as a “modern-day oldie.” It’s equipped with a key change before the final chorus, just like the old Motown soul songs. And like many Holland, Dozier, and Holland hits, the lyrics are simple and sweet.
Brown’s version of Motown soul music celebrates the natural beauty of his partner. In the song, his partner comes downstairs with tousled hair, wearing his sweatshirt, perfectly ill-fitted. His lover gets the words wrong while she sings and dances to the radio in an episode that could have been yanked from a Hallmark Christmas movie.
Every morning when you come downstairs
Hair’s a mess, but I don’t care
No makeup on, shining so bright
My old sweatshirt never fit so right
Dancing around to the radio
Humming the words that you don’t know
Cross out finding an angel off my list
Thinking that it don’t get no better than this
Brown and his talented band sound laid-back and light as they hit the chorus, aiming for Detroit soul. This attempt at pop-soul proves the genius of Motown founder Berry Gordy. Imagine what a song like this would sound like, backed by the Funk Brothers. Live concerts reveal Brown’s band is capable of much more than what’s captured here, where they are restricted to Nashville’s stuffy box.
You make loving you easy
You make loving you all I wanna do
Every little smile, every single touch
Reminds me just how much it all makes
Loving you easy
By the second verse, this Hallmark episode reaches a point where the kids must leave the room.
Wrapped around me late at night
Pillow talk by candlelight
Gonna slow this down and make it last
The best things fly by so fast
Jekyll + Hyde is Brown’s fourth studio album and takes its name from Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic horror novella, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Brown acts as a shapeshifting musician on Jekyll + Hyde, moving between genres as if Dr. Jekyll’s potion has kicked in.
On the album’s second single, “Heavy Is the Head,” Brown duets with Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell with a snarling distorted bass contrasting the sweetness of “Loving You Easy.” Mr. Hyde was sinister, though. And even with Cornell, the careful attempts at edginess sound nice. Fans who remember Cornell from “Loud Love” or “Jesus Christ Pose” might compare it to the disorientation they’d feel if Sean Penn showed up opposite Detective Stabler on Law & Order.
On the Road Again
The Zac Brown Band has logged many miles with a heavy touring schedule and is known for its dynamic concerts. Years of touring have paid off, and their musical range is impressive, but Jekyll + Hyde is an album that moves through numerous genres without ever really committing to any of them.
The New York Times described the band as “a huge amalgam of soft rock, country-rock, hard rock, heavyish metal, big band music, bluegrass and, yes, a touch of electronic music.” Though they graduated from the bar band stages long ago, the tendency to sound like everything and nothing at the same time remained.
When Levi Stubbs sang the Four Tops hit “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch),” he sounded desperate. Merriam-Webster defines “soul” as “the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life.” Stubbs sang as the definition reads. If the goal is soul, then you better bring some with you.
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Photo by Jason Davis/Getty Images
